Kvenland


Kvenland, known as Cwenland, Qwenland, Kænland or 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 the information provided by the Norwegian adventurer and traveler Ohthere, and from Nordic sources, primarily Icelandic. One possible additional source was written in the modern-day area of Norway — all the known Nordic sources date to the 12th and 13th centuries. Other possible references to Kvenland by other names or spellings are also discussed on this page.

Old English Orosius

A Norwegian adventurer and traveler named Ohthere visited England around 890 CE. King Alfred of Wessex had his stories written down and included them in his Old English version of a world history written by the Romano-Hispanic author Orosius. Ohthere's story contains the only contemporary description about Kvenland that has survived from the 9th century:
said that the Norwegians' land was very long and very narrow... and to the east are wild mountains, parallel to the cultivated land. Finnas inhabit these mountains... Then along this land southwards, on the other side of the mountain, is Sweden... and along that land northwards, Kvenland. The Kvens sometimes make depredations on the Northmen over the mountain, and sometimes the Northmen on them; there are very large amongst the mountains, and the Kvens carry their ships over land into the meres, and thence make depredations on the Northmen; they have very little ships, and very light.

As is emphasized in the text, Ohthere's account was an oral statement, made to King Alfred, and the section dealing with Kvenland takes up only two sentences. Ohthere's information on Kvens may have been second-hand, since, unlike in his other stories, Ohthere does not emphasize his personal involvement in any way. Ohthere's method of locating Kvenland can be interpreted to mean that Kvenland was located in and around the northern part of the modern-day Sweden and in the mid-western part of the modern-day Finland, when the difference in the Viking compass is taken into consideration. Other, somewhat later sources call the land adjacent to the northern part of Norway "Finnmark."
Ohthere's Finnas may be a reference to the Sami people, but not all historians agree on this. Although Ohthere does not give any name for the area where his "Finnas" lived, he gives a lengthy description of their lives in and around Northern Norway, without mentioning Kvens.
Ohthere's mention of the "large meres" and of the Kvens' boats are of great interest. The meres are said to be "amongst the mountains", the words used in the text being geond þa moras. Ohthere may be referring to the Southern Norwegian lake district, which is also referred to in Orkneyinga saga. This way, the reference would have included Lake Mjøsa, an area which is known to have been inhabited at that time: the Orkneyinga saga tells how these inhabitants were attacked by men from Kvenland.
The mention of the "very light ships" carried overland has a well-documented ethnographic parallel in the numerous portages of the historical river and lake routes in Fennoscandia and Northern Russia. According to the philologist Irmeli Valtonen, " text does not give us a clear picture where the Cwenas are to be located though it seems a reasonable conclusion that they lived or stayed somewhere in the modern-day areas of Northern Sweden or Northern Finland."
The name "Kven" briefly appears later in King Alfred's Orosius. The Kven Sea is mentioned as the northern border for the ancient Germany, and Kvenland is mentioned again, as follows:
... the Swedes have to the south of them the arm of the sea called East, and to the east of them Sarmatia, and to the north, over the wastes, is Kvenland, to the northwest are the Sami people, and the Norwegians are to the west.

The term Sarmatism was first used by Jan Długosz in his 15th century work on the history of Poland. Długosz was also responsible for linking the Sarmatians to the prehistory of Poland, and this idea was continued by other chroniclers and historians such as Marcin Bielski, Marcin Kromer and Maciej Miechowita. Miechowita's Tractatus de Duabus Sarmatiis became influential abroad, and for some time it was one of the most widely used reference works on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Viking compass is believed to have had a 45 degree rotation of cardinal points. 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 Sami people would be to the north. These points are correct after rotation based on the difference between the Viking and modern compasses. Kvenland is then situated to the northeast of Sweden and might be placed somewhere around the present-day Swedish Norrland or the western part of the present-day Finland. The information of Kvenland being situated "over the wastes", northwards from the Viking-period "Sweden" matches the idea of Kvenland extending to Norrland. There is no "Finland" mentioned anywhere either in the original or the updated version of Orosius' history.

''Hversu Noregr byggdist'' and ''Orkneyinga saga''

Three medieval Icelandic accounts discuss Kvenland. They are Egils saga and the more legendary Hversu Noregr byggdist and Orkneyinga saga. According to Hversu Noregr byggdist, Kvens made sacrifices to Thorri, who "ruled over Gothland, Kvenland and Finland." According to Orkneyinga saga, Fornjót was "a king" who "reigned over Gotland, which we now know as Finland and Kvenland."
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.

Recent archaeological discoveries made in Finland have further emphasized the close ties between Gotland and modern-day Finland during the primeval era. In the late spring of 2013, a Merovingian period silver plate, believed to be a piece of a sword scabbard, was discovered in Rautjärvi, Finland. The origin of the silver plate has been traced to Gotland, based on its style of ornamentation. According to Jukka Luoto of the Museum of South Karelia, "this indicates that these areas have independently conducted trade with Gotland."
Orkneyinga saga contains a realistic description of Nór traveling from Kvenland to Norway. Based on the saga's internal chronologies, this would have happened around the 6th or 7th century CE, but the dating is very insecure. Locations of Kvenland, Finland and Gotland are given rather exactly:
"to the east of the gulf that lies across from the White Sea ; we call that the Gulf of Bothnia."

The saga is correct in placing the Gulf of Bothnia "across" from the White Sea. The saga does not say that Kvenland was on the coast, but just east of the Gulf.
This is how Nór started his journey to Norway:
But Nor, his brother, waited until snow lay on the moors so he could travel on snow-shoes. He went out from Kvenland and skirted the Gulf, and came to that place inhabited by the men called Sami ; that is beyond Finnmark.

Having traveled for a while, Nór was still "beyond Finnmark." After a brief fight with Sami people, Nór continued:
But Nor went thence westward to the Kjolen Mountains and for a long time they knew nothing of men, but shot beasts and birds to feed to themselves, until they came to a place where the rivers flowed west of the mountains. — Then he went up along the valleys that run south of the fjord. That fjord is now called Trondheim.

Starting somewhere on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, Nór had either gone all the way up and around the Gulf, or skied across; it was winter, and the gulf might have been frozen. 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. There is no mention of Kvenland after that. Again only a handful of words are devoted to Kvenland, mainly telling where it was.
Nór's journey from Kvenland to Norway is missing from Hversu, which in fact does not even mention that Nór came from Kvenland at all, only stating: "Norr had great battles west of the Keel". The journey may have been lifted from some other context and added to Orkneyinga saga in a later phase by an unknown author who wanted to make the saga more adventurous.

Egil's saga

Egils saga is an epic Icelandic saga possibly by Snorri Sturluson, who may have written it between 1220 and 1240 CE. The saga covers a long period, starting in Norway in 850 CE and ending around 1000 CE. It contains a short description of Egil's uncle Thorolf Kveldulfsson co-operating with a Kvenland king, Faravid, against invading Karelians. Rather accurate geographical details about Kvenland's location are given in chapter XIV:
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 is Jämtland, then Hälsingland and Kvenland, then Finland, then Karelia ; along all these lands to the north lies Finmark, and there are wide inhabited fell-districts, some in dales, some by lakes. The lakes of Finmark are wonderfully large, and by the lakes there are extensive forests. But high fells lie behind from end to end of the Mark, and this ridge is called Keels.

Like Hversu Noregr byggdist, Egils saga clearly separates Finland and Kvenland, listing them as neighboring areas. However, Finland is not listed in any of the saga's surviving versions, indicating that it might be a later addition by someone who did not recognize Kvenland any more. The saga says "eastwards from Namdalen is Jämtland", but actually the direction is southeast. Also Hälsingland is southeast, not east, of Jämtland. 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.
In chapter XVII Thorolf goes to Kvenland again:
That same winter Thorolf went up on the fell with a hundred men; he passed on at once eastwards to Kvenland and met king Faravid.

Had Thorolf gone up to the mountains around his homeland Namdalen and then straight "eastwards", i.e., southeast, he would have first reached Jämtland and then Hälsingland. These are the same lands that were listed earlier in the saga. If the passage about going "southwest" is taken literally and directly, continuing from Hälsingland across the Gulf of Bothnia Thorolf would have arrived in the southwestern tip of present-day Finland, the center of Finland's Viking period population.
Again, as with Ohthere, Sami people and Kvens are not discussed at the same time. The saga tells how Norwegians taxed the Sami people, but there is no indication in the saga that the Kvens would have competed with the Norwegians for control of the Sami or lived near or among them. 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. The saga places the confrontation of Norwegians and Karelians in the 9th century.

''Norna-Gests þáttr''

Norna-Gests þáttr has a brief mention of the king of Denmark and Sweden, Sigurd Hring, fighting against the Curonians and the Kvens:
Sigurd Ring was not there, since he had to defend his land, Sweden, since Curonians and Kvens were raiding there.

''Historia Norwegiae''

Historia Norwegiae was written sometime between 1160 and 1175 CE in an unknown location. It contains a list of peoples in the North:
But towards north many pagan tribes—alas!—stretch from the east behind Norway, namely Karelians and Kvens, corneous Sami people and both peoples of Bjarmia. But what tribes dwell behind them, have we no certainty.

''Icelandic Annals''

The Icelandic Annals have a late mention of Kvens clearly active in the North. Around 1271 CE, the following is said to have happened:
Then Karelians and Kvens pillaged widely in Hålogaland.

Possible other sources

In some pre-medieval and medieval texts, it is not clear which groups of people the authors are referring to by the titles used. According to historians, terms used for either the Kvens, Finns and/or Sami in texts written during the 1st millennium AD include the following:
In the Old Norse language the word "Finn" referred to the Sami people, though, and not the Finnish people, and the word still has that same meaning in Bokmål. Skridfinne and finne also referred to the Sami people, and not the Finnish people, in both the other Scandinavian languages, Latin and Greek during mediaeval times.

''Germania''

According to Finnish historian Kyösti Julku the Germanic tribe Sitones mentioned in Tacitus' Germania in 98 CE lived in the area in northern Fennoscandia claimed to be Kvenland, saying "There can be no confusion about the geographical location of the Sitones."

Different interpretations

Kvenland and Kainuu

Kvenland has generated many theories about its origin, the location of Kvenland east of the Bay of Bothnia has, however, been an unchanging feature of most interpretations since the 17th century, when the Swedish historians Johannes Messenius and Olaus Rudbeckius first noted the concept of Kvenland in Old Norse sources. In 1650, Professor Michael Wexionius from Turku became the first to associate Kvenland with the Finnish Kainuu. In the 18th century the Finnish historian Henrik Gabriel Porthan, among others, focused attention on the Ohthere passage mentioning the Cwenas. Whereas Porthan suggested that the ancient Kvens may have been Swedish, many others came to view the Kvens as an ancient Finnish tribe.
Nowadays Kainuu is a name of an inland province in northeastern Finland. In the past the name Kainuu was often used of the more western coastal area around the Bay of Bothnia, even up to the 19th century. In the early Umesaami dictionaries the terms Kainolads and Kainahalja described Norwegian and Swedish men and women respectively.

Kvenland and Pohjola

In a theory somewhat closely related to the Kainuu theory, Kvenland has also been associated with the legendary Pohjola. Pohjola is an other-worldly country in Finnish mythology, ruled by a fierce witch called Louhi. Pohjola is best known from the Kalevala, a 19th-century Finnish work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, collected largely in the Finnish region of Kainuu.
Different interpretations of the origins of the mythical Pohjola exist. Some include parts of Lapland and the ancient Kainuu in Kalevala's Pohjola. Some point out a similarity with the name Pohjanmaa, a region in western Finland.

Other interpretations

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. The folklorist and professor of literature Väinö Kaukonen calls it "fantastic fabulation" and a "dream-wish". However, Professor Emeritus in Archeology at the University of Turku, Unto Salo has also concluded that "Kvens/Kainulainens" were men of Satakunta in Southern Finland. There is archeological evidence linking Satakunta and Lapland but skipping the areas between which suggests that expeditions were undertaken from Satakunta to the North during the late Viking Age. Further, toponomy suggests that there were regular routes used by the people of Satakunta to get to the North. Lastly, haapio, a type of a very light dugout boat was used extensively in Satakunta and would have been ideal for such expeditions. Unto Salo speculates that the name Haaparanta in the Northern Sweden 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.

Woman Land

Different views exist of why ancient scholars have made references to Kvenland as an area dominated by women. Some have suggested that there may have been misinterpretations of terminology. Whatever the etymological origin of the element kven, it effortlessly translates to "woman" in Old Norse. Proto-Germanic *kwinōn, *kunōn, *kwēni-z and *kwēnō for "woman" developed into kona, kvǟn, kvān, kvɔ̄n, kvendi, kvenna and kvinna in Old Norse. It is plausible that this led learned speakers of Old Norse to identify Kvenland with the land of the Amazons in Greek legend; Adam of Bremen, for example, often mentions Amazons in writing of the far North.
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. So notoriously do they degenerate not only from a state of liberty, but even below a state of bondage."

According to a view shared by many historians, the term Sitones shares etymological roots with Sigtuna, which much later had a Latin spelling Situne. According to Disas saga, the Sitones were ruled by a queen. According to a common view, the "queen" of the Sitones either derives from or is a possible linguistic confusion of an Old Norse term used for "woman", which shares linguistic origins with the term used in reference to the Kvens. According to Thomas William Shore, the English language term "queen" derives from the term "qwen", a spelling used for the Kvens e.g. by Wulfila in c. 352 CE and King Alfred the Great of Wessex in c. 890 CE. In 1075 AD, in Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, the German chronicler Adam of Bremen calls Kvenland Women's Land, stating the following:
Meanwhile Swedes, 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, whom we consider to be Amazons, was killed along with his army from poison, that they had mixed to the spring water.

"After that come the Swedes that rule wide areas up until the "Land of Women". Living east of these are said to be Wizzi, Mirri, Lamiy, Scuti and Turci up until the border of Russia."

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. The ancient Norse knew the Northern ruler-goddesses by the names gýgjar and íviðjur. There is also a reference to a northern land of women in an Icelandic manuscript from the 14th century, which describes a kuenna land.

Different theories on the origins of the Kvens

In 1958, a Finnish historian, politician and University of Helsinki professor, Kustaa Vilkuna, suggested that Kainuu or Kvenland was originally in Southern Finland, on the Gulf of Bothnia and covering just northern Southwest Finland and coastal Satakunta. A small local area called as "Kalanti" would have been a remnant of the earlier name Kvenland. Because of the trading and tribute-taking expeditions as well as settlement expansion of the kainulaiset, the territorial concept of Kainuu was gradually moved northward.
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. This theory was supported by Professor Armas Luukko.
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.
In 1980, the University of Oulu professor Jouko Vahtola pointed out that there is no evidence of the name Kainuu being of Western Finnish origin and considered it to have Eastern Finnish roots. However, he suggested a common Germanic etymology for the names Kainuu and Kvenland. Like most of his predecessors, Vahtola viewed Kainuu/Kvenland as the name of the coastal Ostrobothnia, meaning roughly "low-lying land". Based on the archaeological knowledge of the north, Vahtola did not believe that there was a separate Iron Age tribe called Kvens. He considered the Kvens to be mainly Tavastians hunting and trading in northern Ostrobothnia, thus partially reproducing the view of Jaakkola and Luukko. This theory is nowadays widely adopted in Finland, Sweden and Norway, and it is cited in many studies and popular works.
In 1995 the Finnish linguist Jorma Koivulehto gave support for the theory of common etymological roots of the names Kainuu and Kvenland. He suggests a new etymology meaning roughly "marine gap-land", the "marine gap" being the northern sea-route on the Bothnian Gulf.
Increasing archaeological fieldwork in northern Finland has cast some doubts on the idea of Kvenland having almost no sedentary settlements. 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.
Some Swedish historians have suggested that the ancient Kvens were actually a Scandinavian and not a Finnish group, but these views have little support nowadays. 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. In this case, the land of the Kvens would have extended from the Bothnian Gulf in the west to the Lake Onega in the east.

Kvenland and Kvens later in historical time

In 1328, Tälje Charter - the oldest known record written in Swedish - mention the Birkarls. Based on the information revealed, the Birkarls then inhabited areas, e.g., in Northern Hälsingland, which covered the western coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, and from there all the way up and around the gulf to Oulu River. Tälje Charter is a state treaty ratified between the Kvens and the Swedish crown, in which the king of Sweden guarantees the Birkarl Kvens trading and tax-collecting rights as chief enforcement officers in the North.
In his 1539 map Carta Marina, Swedish Olaus Magnus places Birkarl Kvens on the Norwegian North Atlantic coast, roughly in the middle in between the archipelago of Lofoten and the modern-day city of Tromsø. In his 1555 Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, he also mentions both terms: the Finnish traders who commuted between and inhabited the general area of Tornio and the modern-day area of Norway are said to have been called Kvens. The earliest remaining Norwegian tax records, stored at the National Archival Services of Norway, dating to the mid-16th century, also mention Kvens.
Today, the term Kven is used in Norway in reference to the descendants of Finnish-speaking people who have inhabited or migrated to the present-day area of Norway anytime before World War II. Migration waves from the 16th century onward have brought Finnish settlers to Northern Norway from the modern-day areas of Northern Sweden and Northern Finland, mostly from the northern coastal areas of the Bay of Bothnia.

Modern reappearance of the terms "Kvenland" and "Kvens"

Repeated claims about there in mediaeval times having existed a country named Kvenland, populated by a Finnish-speaking people named Kvens, have reappeared in modern times in northern Sweden and northern Finland, amid claims that the "Kvens" not only are an indigenous people in northern Sweden and Finland, but the indigenous people there. Claims that are directly connected to a struggle over the rights to hunt and fish in very large areas in northern Fennoscandia, between the Sami people, who are the recognised indigenous people of the area, and the Swedish- and Finnish-speaking population there. There are, however, no documented or in any other way proven connection between the people in northern Sweden and Finland who now claim to be Kvens, and the geographical area, and people who lived there, that in mediaeval times were referred to as Kvenland and Kvens.