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6. SECOND PERIOD IRON AGE (B.C. 50 A.D. 400). 21
This notice is interesting, especially on two accounts;
first, because it distinctly describes the Suiones as a Suevic
tribe, together with the Semnones, Lombards, Angles
(Anglii), Hermunduri, Marcomanni and Quadi, Gotini,
Gothones, and many more. So that Sweden has a double
claim to its name, as a Suevic country and as the special
country of the Suiones. The mention of their neighbours,
the Sitones, as governed by a woman, is also very interest
ing. We may suppose that in old Swedish their country
was called
"
Queen-land," meaning land of the Quains or
Finns, but it might also be translated
"
Women s land,"
and this ambiguity apparently gave rise both to the mis
take which Tacitus made, and to the frequent description
of their country about a thousand years later as a land of
Amazons.17
Yet I should not like to assert that women
of martial character were not known in Finland. If the
myths of the giants are rightly connected with the Finns18
we must remember the great part that the giantesses play
in these myths. Martial women certainly were known in
Sweden. Three valiant shield-maidens fought at the
Battle of Bravalla; and what Olaus Magni writes about
"
the piracy of famous virgins," Alflida and the rest (Book
v., ch. 24), does not wholly read like fable.
Ptolemy, who wrote his geography some fifty years
later than Tacitus, also mentions the Gythones as an
inland people, among the smaller nations of Sarmatia.
He tells us that they dwell on the course of the Vistula
below the Wends, who dwell all along the Venedic Gulf,
that is, the Gulf of Danzig (3, 5, 20). In another place
he describes Scandia (that is, Southern Sweden) as a great
island opposite the mouths of the Vistula, and gives
17
See Smith s Diet. Geography, s. v. Sitones, and Bosworth
and Toller: A. S. Diet., s.v., Civenas and Given-land, and
Adam of Bremen, 222 and 228, who speaks of the
"
terra
feminarum "
and the Amazons. See also Montelius : S. H.1
,
Vol. i., p. 263 n.
In the Ynglinga Saga the king of Jotunhem is called Finn.
This is also the name of the giant who (according to popular
legend) built Lund Cathedral.
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