Kvenland
Kvenland, known as Cwenland, Qwenland, Kænland, and similar terms in medieval sources, is an ancient name for an area in Fennoscandia and Scandinavia.
Kvenland, in that or nearly that spelling, is known from an Old English account written in the 9th century, which used information provided by Norwegian adventurer and traveler Ohthere, and from Nordic sources, primarily Icelandic.
[6] The mention of the "very light ships" (boats) carried overland has a well-documented ethnographic parallel in the numerous portages of the historical river and lake routes in Fennoscandia and Northern Russia.
The Kven Sea is mentioned as the northern border for the ancient Germany, and Kvenland is mentioned again, as follows: ... the Swedes (Sweons) have to the south of them the arm of the sea called East (Osti), and to the east of them Sarmatia (Sermende), and to the north, over the wastes, is Kvenland (Cwenland), to the northwest are the nomadic people (Scridefinnas), and the Norwegians (Norðmenn) are to the west.
[9] If the territories listed in King Alfred's Orosius are examined with that in mind, the Norwegians would be to the northwest of Sweden, and the nomadic people would be to the north.
A DNA study conducted on the prehistoric skeletal remains of four individuals from Gotland supports the area having been ethnically interconnected with Finland and Kvenland during the primeval era, just as suggested by Hversu Noregr byggdist and Orkneyinga saga: "The hunter-gatherers show the greatest similarity to modern-day Finns", says Pontus Skoglund, an evolutionary geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden.
In the late spring of 2013, a Merovingian period (600–800 AD) silver plate, believed to be a piece of a sword scabbard, was discovered in Rautjärvi, Finland.
[16] Nór ended up attacking the area around Trondheim in central Norway and later the lake district in the south, conquering the country and uniting it under his rule.
Rather accurate geographical details about Kvenland's location are given in chapter XIV:[17] Finmark is a wide tract; it is bounded westwards by the sea, wherefrom large firths run in; by sea also northwards and round to the east; but southwards lies Norway; and Finmark stretches along nearly all the inland region to the south, as also does Hålogaland outside.
But eastwards from Namdalen (Naumdale) is Jämtland (Jamtaland), then Hälsingland (Helsingjaland) and Kvenland, then Finland, then Karelia (Kirialaland); along all these lands to the north lies Finmark, and there are wide inhabited fell-districts, some in dales, some by lakes.
Since it is widely assumed that the Viking compass had a 45 degree rotation of cardinal points, the saga's "east" seems to correspond to the contemporary southeast.
Much debate has taken place concerning whether the saga provides truthful information of Iron Age Kvenland by mentioning that the Kvens had a real-sounding 'king' and a 'law' to divide the loot.
An original view has been provided by a Finnish historian and Helsinki University professor, Matti Klinge, who has placed Kvenland/Kainuu not only in southern Finland, but around the Baltic Sea as a kind of Finnish-Swedish "maritime confederation".
Klinge has presented a hypothesis of Kvenland as a naval power on the Baltic, located on both the present-day Finnish and Swedish sides of the Gulf of Bothnia as well as in some of the surrounding areas.
Unto Salo speculates that the name Haaparanta ("Aspen shore") in the Northern Sweden (county of Norrbotten) would have been given due to presence of asps needed to build haapios.
Originally Kvenland was more likely situated in the Southern-Ostrobothnia but when this habitation disappeared in the early 9th century for unknown reasons, the Norwegians continued to apply the term Kven to the men of Satakunta and Häme who inherited the Northern trade and taxation.
Proto-Germanic *kwinōn, *kunōn, *kwēni-z and *kwēnō for 'woman' developed into kona, kvǟn, kvān, kvɔ̄n, kvendi, kvenna and kvinna in Old Norse.
[38] Among sources used in the related debate by historians is the following statement of Tacitus from c. 98 CE: "Upon the Suiones, border the people Sitones; and, agreeing with them in all other things, differ from them in one, that here the sovereignty is exercised by a woman.
[44] In 1075 AD, in Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, the German chronicler Adam of Bremen calls Kvenland Women's Land, stating the following: Meanwhile Swedes (Sueones), who had expelled their bishop, got a divine revenge.
And at first King's son called Anund, whose father had sent him to enlarge his kingdom, after arriving to Women's Land (patriam feminarum), whom we consider to be Amazons, was killed along with his army from poison, that they had mixed to the spring water.
(IV 14) [4]In the related debate references are sometimes also made to the Finnish epic Kalevala, according to which Pohjola was ruled by a woman called Louhi or Pohjan-akka.
Another mid-20th-century historian, Professor Jalmari Jaakkola, considered the Kvens or kainulaiset as long-range hunters and tribute-takers coming from Upper Satakunta, from the inland region surrounding the present-day city of Tampere.
[47] In 1979, Professor Pentti Virrankoski of the University of Turku presented a hypothesis according to which Kainuu was originally the sedentary Iron Age settlement in Southern Ostrobothnia.
After the settlement was supposedly destroyed by tribal warfare during the early 9th century, the kainulaiset became dispersed along the western coasts of Finland, leaving only place-names and some archaeological finds as permanent traces.
He considered the Kvens to be mainly Tavastians hunting and trading in northern Ostrobothnia, thus partially reproducing the view of Jaakkola and Luukko (Upper Satakunta being a part of traditional Tavastia).
In 1995 the Finnish linguist Jorma Koivulehto gave support for the theory of common etymological roots of the names Kainuu and Kvenland.
Encouraged by the new findings, Professor Kyösti Julku of Oulu University presented a theory of the Kvens being early permanent Finnish inhabitants of Northern Finland and Norrbotten (a part of modern-day Sweden).
The Swedish archaeologist Thomas Wallerström suggests that the Kvens/kainulaiset was a collective name for several Finnic groups participating in the west-east fur-trade, not just southern Finns but ancestors of Karelians and Vepsians as well.
[51] In his 1539 map Carta Marina, Swedish Olaus Magnus places Birkarl Kvens (Berkara Qvenar) on the Norwegian North Atlantic coast, roughly in the middle in between the archipelago of Lofoten and the modern-day city of Tromsø.
[4][52] The earliest remaining Norwegian tax records, stored at the National Archival Services of Norway (Riksarkivet), dating to the mid-16th century, also mention Kvens.
