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Anglo-Saxon immigration of such old date known
to history, and must be regarded rather as being
of Scandinavian descent. The poems of Ossian
attest the presence and wars of the Scandians in
Scotland, and Lochlin, the name by which that
bard designates their country, is the same under
which it is mentioned in the Irish annals [1].
Before we quit this subject, it will be proper to
touch upon a tradition which still survives in
another region. In the inner valleys of the Alps,
severed from the rest of the world, dwells an
inconsiderable tribe which still asserts its Swedish
extraction. At present this legend is confined to
Hasslidale, in the canton of Berne, but it was once
general among the inhabitants of Schwytz; and
in old times it was still more widely diffused.
King Gustavus I. mentions it in a public ordinance
as a proof of the former dense population of
Sweden, and Gustavus Adolphus refers to it in his
negotiations and letters to the Swiss. The written
record of this tradition is not very ancient [2], and
abounds in chronological and other errors.
Setting aside these, its contents may be thus
described. The legend begins by assigning the usual
cause of northern emigrations, namely a famine, as
the motive of the journey; but the points of
departure are both Sweden and Friesland. The
pilgrims march from a place called Hasle, along the
banks of the Rhine [3]; in their progress a
Frankish army is encountered and defeated, and they at
length arrive in the Alps, where they form a settlement,
because the land seems in their eyes to
resemble their own country. In our judgment
this event falls within the age of the northern
expeditions; in the first place, because Friesland
really was, during the greater part of the ninth
century, subject to the Northmen, and their
ordinary domicile, whence their expeditions issued.
Next, because a contemporary Norman chronicle [4]
relates that in 881 they ascended the Mosel, and
wintered in a fortified camp at a place called
Haslow [5], from which they broke up in the following
spring, defeated a Frankish army that was brought
against them, and carried their devastations along
the Rhine. Old chronicles mention that they
penetrated as far as Worms. Thirdly, because,
according to the saga of Olof Tryggwason [6], the sons of
Ragnar Lodbroc took part in this expedition; for
this must be the same in which, as Ragnar’s saga
relates, they arrived at Wiflisburg [7], in
Switzerland. And, fourthly, because, as so many
circumstances agree with the Swiss tradition, its
concluding allegation, that a settlement followed, is by
no means improbable. The acknowledged end of
the Norman expeditions was not merely plunder,
but the acquisition of a new home [8]; and this the
smaller portion of the Norman army might have
remained to select in the valleys of the Alps, while
the rest returned upon hearing the rumour that
the emperor Charles the Fat was collecting a great
army oil the Rhine to oppose them.
Even Swiss historians see in the inhabitants of
these Alpine dales a peculiar race [9], and there also
recurs the old Swedish federative system. It is
plain from legends which still survive among them,
as to the manner and order in which they first
peopled the land [10], that their settlement in it is
comparatively new, and it is also known that for a
long time they were few in number [11]. That at the
end of the ninth century there were still heathens
in these regions to whom it was necessary to preach
Christianity, will cease to awaken surprise if the
opinions we have advanced respecting their origin
be admitted to have congruity to truth.
For the share of the Swedish name in this Swiss
legend of migration, besides that this may be
couched in the appellation of Normans, then
common to all the people of the three Scandian
kingdoms, it is to be remembered that those Northmen
who accompanied Biörn Ironside (a son of Ragnar
Lodbroc, and, according to the northern saga, a
Swedish king), are also called in extraneous
accounts West Goths, and consequently in part came
from Swedish West Gothland [12].
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