The Ethnology of EuropeLatham, R. G. (Robert Gordon)
History
The Ethnology of Europe
Latham, R. G. (Robert Gordon)
Ethnology -- Europe
1. _Norway._--Norway agrees with Sweden in the likelihood of its
earliest population having been Ugrian--Ugrian of the Lapp type, and
continued southwards from Lapland or Finmark. Upon these the ancestors
of the present Norwegians encroached.
2. _Sweden._--In Norway the Germanic population came in immediate
contact with the Ugrian; in Sweden it was, to a great extent, preceded
by one from Courland and Prussia--the Goths. Hence, the ethnological
elements in Sweden are one degree more complex.
3. _Denmark._--Denmark differs from both Norway and Sweden in respect to
its primary population; inasmuch as it is bounded on the north by the
sea, so that its relations to the Ugrian area of the aboriginal
Scandinavia are those of an island.
Does this prevent us from assuming a continuity of population? I cannot
say. Although the north of Jutland is separated by a considerable
breadth of water from the south of Scandinavia, Sealand is within sight
of the southwestern coast of Sweden, and the south-western population of
Sweden might easily have been extended into Denmark. On the other hand,
however, the population which occupied the neck of the Chersonesus may
with equal, if not greater reason, be considered to have been continued
northward. But this population is itself complex, for instead of
belonging to a single stock, we find, at the beginning of the historical
period, Germans on the western, and Slavonians on the eastern half of
Holstein. Which of these populations was continued into the Cimbric
Chersonese? Or was there a third stock different from either? Or did
each fill up a portion of the area, and if so, in what proportions? My
own opinion in respect to these complexities is, that originally the
southern half (at least) of the Cimbric Chersonese was Slavonic, even as
the Mecklenburg and Lauenburg frontiers were Slavonic; and that,
subsequently, a twofold displacement set-in--the Vitæ having invaded the
islands and the north-eastern parts of Jutland from Prussia and Courland
by sea, and the Frisians having pressed forwards from the Lower Elbe by
land. Still, it would be hazardous to assert, that, during those
primitive periods, when the whole of Norway and Sweden were Ugrian--as
they, once, unquestionably were--the Danish Isles and the Cimbric
Chersonese were not Ugrian also. It would be hazardous even to pronounce
that the whole of the southern coast of the Baltic was not Ugrian
also--since both the Slavonic populations of Mecklenburg and Pomerania,
and the Lithuanians of Prussia and Courland belonged to the encroaching
divisions of our species. That a Ugrian population extended as far
southward and westward as the Elbe is a doctrine that may be maintained
without going to the full recognition of the so-called Finnic
hypothesis; which carries the populations akin to the Ugrian as far
south as the Pyrenees, and sees in the Basques of Biscay and the Lapps
of Lapland, the fragments of a vast population once continuous, but,
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