Kven: Encyclopedia II - Kven - Historical usage of the term

Kven - Historical usage of the term

98 A.D., the Roman historian Gaius Cornelius Tacitus wrote about the Fenni, people of the north. This is the first reference to the Finns in recorded history. (In reality he is thought to have meant the Lapps).

To add to the confusion, the Viking Age Norwegians often called the Samis either Skridfinns or Finns, to separate them from the Kvens, who in reality actually were - of course - also Finns, more so than the Samis, though they too are members of the Finnic (a.k.a. Finno-Ugric or Fenno-Ugric) family of peoples.

Kvens refers to a historical group - or an alliance - of people who were fishermen, hunters and warriors, usually associated with a western and south-western Finnic people. Some of the only few historical sources of Kvens are the Anglo-Saxon chronicles and Norse sagas where e.g. in Orkneyinga saga it is stated that the Kvens ruled in Kvenland, presumably along the coast shore of the Gulf of Bothnia and all the way up north to the Arctic Ocean from there.

Historians estimate that the most active and strong period of the Kven society exsisted ca. 800-1100 AD. Although findings are quite sparse, there is some archaeological support - e.g. from the grave findings in Ostrobothnia - of a class based hierarchy, presumably based mainly on fur trade, in which the leading class seems to have consisted of Finnish traders. These particular archeological findings date to the 6th century.

Recently, in the beginning of the 21st century - including in 2005 - promissing jewlery findings at the Lake Inari district in Northern Finland have been made. These findings are located in the heart of the historic Kvenland, and the items found date to the most active period of the Kven society in the end of the 10th century.

The first known written use of the term Kven can be found from the Account of the Viking Othere. The information given is based to the voyage of a Northern Norwegian (i.e. Norse) leader Ottar to Northern Scandinavia and the Arctic Ocean in the end of the 9th century.

In these historical writings "Cwenaland" is said to have located above the "Sweoland" - the land of the Sweos -, i.e. the modern day area of Southern Sweden. Up till the last centuries of the Middle Ages, today's Northern Sweden remained a part of the historic Kvenland, although in the official government writings and maps of the Swedish realm - a.k.a. Sweden-Finland - the area was beginning to be referred to as Lappia (Lapland) in the end of the Middle Ages.

In these types of early writings the term Kven is sometimes believed to have been used to distinguish the reindeer herders, called Fenni, from the non-herders, called Kven. The old viewpoint that Kven is equal to the Finnish kainulaiset (or kainuulaiset) and Kvenland to the Finnish Kainuu has not found full etymological acceptance by some researchers. On the other hand, some researchers believe the term Fenni to refer to all of the historic Finnic people of the north - i.e. both the Samis and the Kvens.

Furtheremore, the Finns (historically known as Kvens in northern Scandinavia) are also known to have been reindeer herders - and deer herders prior to Middle Ages -, eventhough not to as large extend as the Samis. Therefore, it is possible that some further away historians during the Viking Age - such as Muhammad al-Idrisi - could have confused the Samis with the Kvens.

The spelling Quen in reference to the Kvens is used in Latin texts from the 17th century on.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Historical usage of the term", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki