2.5 Introduction to the History of Norden...etcetera, etcetera...
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This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
2.5 Introduction to the History of Norden...etcetera, etcetera...
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, as the ice-cap already for
long had continued its slow and irregular retraction up to the North,
Europe was inhabited by mammoths, bears, bisons, reindeers and woolly
rhinos.
...and some hunting families of humans.
The first recognizable event was when a culture in southwestern Europe
seems to have concentrated very much on the reindeers. In the cave
paintings in France and Spain from over 15'000 years ago we can see
the people knew how to use bows and arrows.
After year 9'000 B.C. the climate of Europe changed, and the reindeers
came to remain only in the farthest North, along the ice-cap which
still covered what today is Finland, Norway and the most of Sweden
in-between. Also Scotland had for long time a glacier remnant of the
ice-cap.
The Creator hadn't yet constructed the Danish straits or the English
Channel, and hence there was land connection from Scotland and the
Scandinavian ice-border in Västergötland all the way to the Ural
mountains and beyond.
Most of Europe passed on to the Middle Stone Age (marked for instance
by the invention of saws); in the fertile crescent along River Tigris,
and along the Palestinian coast, crops began to be planted and sown.
As we all know, the Agrarian Revolution in the fertile crescent came
in due time to lead forward to
* domestication of goats, sheep, pigs & cattle
* knowledge to polish the stone tools
* knowledge to produce fired pottery
...and later:
* usage of slash-and-burn (or wood burning) technique
And this latter technique came to be spread from the Black Sea along
River Danube, through Central Europe almost to the coast of
present-day Holland, Germany & Poland. The people utilizing the wood
burning technique could populate the land much more densely than their
hunting and gathering neighbors, thus it is commonly believed that the
migration of the slash-and-burn knowledge represents a real migration
and propagation of a wood-burning people.
These migrants are commonly acknowledged as Indo-Europeans. At the
border of their expanding culture some of the neolithic novelties got
adopted: hence, pottery and polished stone tools were used by the
pre-neolithic cultures along the North Sea and along the southernmost
Baltic shores, as among the Ertebølle folk of Denmark. That's how our
forefathers learned to polish stone tools and to fire pottery
approximately 4,500 B.C.
At this time the coast- and lake-region of Finland was inhabited by
nomadic people using Russian flint-stone, pottery and polished stone
tools.
Two thousand years later the Indo-European culture had made further
progress, approximately to the River Vistula in North-East and in
Scandinavia to the River Dalälven and up along most of the Norwegian
coast.
Meanwhile, high cultures with towns and irrigation had emerged in
Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus valley.
Then, around year 2,000 B.C. the know-how of copper-working (which for
thousands of years only slowly had expanded from Turkey and the
fertile crescent) now in a high speed became known in all of the world
inhabited by Indo-Europeans. And Indo-European cultures seem to have
expanded from River Vistula all the way up to Gulf of Finland and
River Volga. Grain and cattle became a complement to hunting for
people living along the waters.
(This was, by the way, the time of the Palace Culture of Crete.)
For the following years, 2,000 B.C. - 200 B.C., the map of cultures in
Northern Europe looks almost static:
* In the North there are proto-Samis hunting and moving all the way
from the Ural mountains to the Norwegian coast.
* From Gulf of Finland to River Volga there are proto-Finns,
* and south of them Indo-European Balts and Slavs.
* Denmark, Pomerania and the south-western Scandinavian peninsula
were inhabited by proto-Germanic people.
* In the South the domain of the Celts was south of River Elbe,
stretching to the Pyrenées, to the Mediterranean and over the Alps
and the Carpats.
(Despite important ideas continue to spread in the same well known
South-East to North-West direction.)
Bronze working was learned by the Slavs, the Balts, the Germanics, the
Estonian Finns and the Samis around year 1,500 B.C.
Then around year 1,000 B.C. the new technique of iron-working had
begun to expand out of its original area in Turkey. A process mirrored
in the tales from ancient Greece and in the Old Testament of the
Bible. And the Aryans conquered the Indus valley.
It came, however, to last until year 500 B.C. till this knowledge
reached beyond the Celts' northern border.
The times were turbulent east of the Mediterranean. In the 9th
century B.C. the Assyrians flourished with trade and genocide. Around
year 600 B.C. Egypt falls for Assyria, then Assyria falls for Persia
constituting a realm from Indus to Italy, where they were stooped by
Etruscs and Cartagians. Monotheism is advocated by Zaratustra in
Persia, and by the Prophet Jesaia (the second), during the 6th
century B.C.
During the 4th century Alexander the Great conquers Persia, and then,
after his death, his realm is split in several large parts, whereafter
Rome starts to expand.
Then the Germanic culture began a slow expansion in southern
direction: At year 100 B.C. the woods of Central Europe were home to
both several Germanic tribes as well as to Celtic tribes, but in the
North the Germanics dominated from Trondheim and Åland to the plains
between River Rhine and River Neiße.
The Roman Empire expanded through France; the Celtic area diminished
and disappeared, and Germanic peoples became a major hassle for the
Roman Army. The solution was in the long run that Germanic men came to
take over the administration of the Empire and its armies at the same
time as the Germanics were Romanized in culture, beliefs and language.
As the Celts' dominance over Western Europe dissolved, the influences
from the Mediterranean region again reached the Baltic Sea and
Scandinavia. Trade with the Roman Empire increased, and might have
contributed to the peculiar phase of the European history called the
Migration Period when Germanic tribes and Asian tribes came to move
around on the European continent.
But before that the Slavs had started to expand. First in the East,
along the River Dnieper, at the expense of the Balts, and then to the
River Don and to upper River Volga.
Around the turn of millennium, good iron was produced at the
Oslo-fjord in southern Norway; at the same time, some important
Germanic tribes inhabited the coasts of North Sea and the Baltic Sea,
and the shores of the rivers:
* Gepids around River Vistula
* Goth around River Oder
* Burgundians further south between the rivers Oder & Vistula
* Marcomanni further south, around the upper River Elbe
* Frisians at the North Sea coast between the rivers Elbe and Rhine
Then, around year A.D. 200, the Goths and the Gepids moved down from
the coast, through (?) the Burgundian area, toward River Danube. The
Goths expanded over River Volga to River Don.
Concurrently the Norsemen increased in number also in the very
Scandinavia, expanding along the water routes between Norway and
Jutland.
Jutland was the richest territory as that was the key position from
where all Scandinavian and Baltic trade to and from Rome and the Rhine
valley could be controlled. The people on Gotland, the Guthes (Gutar),
dominated the Baltic sea and its trade. [ We are not(!) taking any
stand in the discussion whether Jutes, Guthes and Goths are
etymologically equivalents. In any case: these people came to inhabit
different areas and to constitute different peoples. ]
The Goths were split in a lesser part, the Visigoths, who later came
to create a kingdom on the Iberian peninsula, and the Ostrogoths who
for a long time came to dominate all of the land between River Don and
River Oder.
Beside the Goths and the Norsemen there existed more than a dozen of
distinguishable Germanic tribes:
* Jutes and Angles on Jutland
* Frisians, Franks, Burgundians and Allemans on the eastern side of
River Rhine
* Saxons, Thuringians, Lombards and Marcomanni on both sides of
River Elbe
* Vandals, Rugians, Gepids and Visigoths north of River Danube
During early 4th century the Goths were Christianized, and from
A.D. 325 the Bible is translated to Gothic. The Goths were however
Arian Christians, and not Catholics as the Franks would become.
Then the Huns came from the East, defeating almost any enemy. In the
370s the Ostrogoths and soon also the Visigoths started a great move.
The Visigoths went through Greece, along the Adriatic Coast to Naples
and Rome and further to Spain where they defeated the Vandals (who had
arrived five years before). The Vandals moved on to what today is
Libya.
As the Ostrogoths and the Huns had moved on, it turned out that the
Slavs popped up as the successors after the abdicated Ostrogothian
lords. While the Baltic languages and culture almost disappeared, the
Slavic area now greatly increased. After the Huns are defeated, Slavic
tribes are identified along the southern Baltic shore, in all of the
area east of River Elbe and (beside Magyars) in the area east of the
Alps.
Examples of these nowadays almost forgotten names are:
Finnic tribes:
* Karelians at lake Ladoga and further north
* Votes at river Narva
* Estonians in present day Estonia
* Livonians at Gulf of Riga
Baltic tribes:
* Curonians (as in Curland/Kurland) at Gulf of Riga
* Lithuanians at the rivers Neman & Dvina
* Notangians at river Pregola
* Prussians at, and east of, River Vistula
(had migrated from the Neman/Dvina area circa 200 A.D.)
* (other Baltic tribes there around had names as
Jotwings/Jatvingians, Lettigallians, Notangians, Samen, Schalauer,
Schamaiten, Selens & Semigallians)
Slavic tribes:
* Novgorods in North-East, at Lake Ilmen.
* Pomeranians between the Rivers Oder & Vistula
* Poles around River Warta (between Vistula & Oder) (actually they
were sooner half a dozen of tribes, united around year 1.000 A.D.
with names as Polanes, Vislanes, Slenzanes, Opolinis and others)
* Wends/Sorbs around the rivers Neiße & Saale (between upper Oder &
Elbe)
* Abodritic/Obodritic tribes at the Baltic coast (between lower Oder
& Elbe)
* Czech tribes south of the Sudeten mountains
* Daleminci at River Elbe in present day Saxony.
During the 6th century the Gutar from Gotland island established
colonies at the eastern shore of the Baltic sea, for instance at the
estuary of River Dvina. Later, in the 9th century, Curland/Courland
was conquered by Swedish Vikings.
In western Europe the Franks conquered all the land from River Rhine
to the Pyrenées; the Angles and a lot of Jutes and Saxons conquered
England; and the Langobards came to conquer the Ostrogothian realm in
today's Yugoslavia and Italy.
In eastern Scandinavia, the Uppland region north of Lake Mälaren
(Roslagen - the Rus people) increased its dominance. ...a dominance
which has been held ever since. Gutar, Götar, Finns and Samis
constitute contemporary cultures.
In southern Scandinavia the Danes dominated. Saxo Grammaticus tells,
if we ought to confide in his tales, that Saxonians and Slavs from
time to time paid tributes to Danish kings. According to Saxo also
Scania, Gotland, Värmland, Jämtland and Hälsingland in present-day
Sweden were lands of the Danes, although usually not under a common
king.
Then, during the 8th century Muslims conquered the Germanic realms on
Africa's northern coast and on the Iberian peninsula. Left was the
region of Franks, which after a split in the 9th century came to
constitute the states of France and Germany.
At this time trade through Russia to the muslim Persia became
important. The Russian waterways are dominated by Svear and Gutar
(Svenonians and Guths) called Varyagi or Varangians by the Slavs, and
according to written sources present at the Sea of Azov in 739 A.D.
The castles in Russia evolve to separate kingdoms and get
Christianized.
With Christianity (if not before) Germanic lords began to conquer many
lands inhabited by Slavs, Balts and Estonians/Finns claiming supremacy
- but as constituting a minute minority often soon assimilated.
...but with the arrival of Christian religion, the prehistoric era
ends, and so does this tale.
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