- Project Runeberg -  The Swedish Nation in Word and Picture /
23

(1921) [MARC] Author: Herman Lundborg
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Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part I - Professor Otto von Friesen, Uppsala, Emigration from Sweden in Ancient Times

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If the newcomers did not succeed in arranging matters peacefully they had
recourse to force of arms. If they were fortunate, the fugitives obtained possession
of greater or smaller parts of the country and expelled its former owners. This
throws light on Jordanes’ statement that the Dani (Danes) were Svear who drove
the Heruli forth from their homes in Scania. The name Dani seems really to
means dwellers on the plain and there is reason to assume that the Danish king«
dom was formed by these Scanians, who gradually subdued the Danish istands
and Jutland as well.

But the main region to which the emigrants directed their course was the
German coast of the Baltic past of the mouth of the Oder. Century after century
fresh hordes arrived there and succeeded in gaining a foothold there. Each time it was
necessity that paved the way, but when the emigrants found themselves at home
in the new country and had experienced its fertility and the greater security of
its sustenance, a message was sent across the seas to their relatives at home.
They needed to strengthen their ranks against the former owners attempts to expel
the newcomers and regain their land.

Thus one great tribe after another grew up on the fertile south coast of the
Baltic and penetrated up the valleys of the Vistula and the Oder.

In language too these East Germanic tribes show a doser affinity to the
Scandinavians than the Germans, Dutch, Frisians or English.

Finally from the beginning of our epoch the East Teutons moved farther to
the south*east, south and south»west down towards the frontiers of the great
Roman empire, to districts favoured by a still more fertile nature and rich with
the flourishing culture of hundreds and thousands of years. But then they had
left their maternal hearth, the meagre soil and severe climate where in their
struggle for a human existence amid troubles and hardships at the limits of the
cultivable world they had grown strong in body and will. Amidst the abundance
of Central Europe and the Mediterranean there was a gradual transformation of
the qualities that had given them their character, their physical and spiritual ele*
vation. After five hundred years all the political edifices they had erected had
collapsed. A few centuries later their language and their national qualities had
in most cases disappeared. And now only anthropology can trace them with
difficulty in some Italian, Spanish, and African settlements, where blue eyes, light
hair and beards, and unusual height bear witness to an ancient Northern weft in
the inhabitants.

L

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