Norwegian Life | Page 2

runs a chain of mountains not inappropriately called Kölen,
or Keel. The name suggests the image which the aspect of the land calls
to mind, that of a huge ship floating keel upwards on the face of the
ocean. This keel forms the frontier line between the kingdoms of
Norway and Sweden: Sweden to the east, sloping gently from the hills
to the Baltic, Norway to the west, running more abruptly down from
their watershed to the Atlantic.
Norway (in the old Norse language Noregr, or _Nord-vegr, i.e_., the
North Way), according to archaeological explorations, appears to have
been inhabited long before historical time. The antiquarians maintain
that three populations have inhabited the North: a Mongolian race and a
Celtic race, types of which are to be found in the Finns and the
Laplanders in the far North, and, finally, a Caucasian race, which
immigrated from the South and drove out the Celtic and Laplandic
races, and from which the present inhabitants are descended. The
Norwegians, or Northmen (Norsemen), belong to a North-Germanic
branch of the Indo-European race; their nearest kindred are the Swedes,
the Danes, and the Goths. The original home of the race is supposed to

have been the mountain region of Balkh, in Western Asia, whence from
time to time families and tribes migrated in different directions. It is not
known when the ancestors of the Scandinavian peoples left the original
home in Asia; but it is probable that their earliest settlements in
Norway were made in the second century before the Christian era.
The Scandinavian peoples, although comprising the oldest and most
unmixed race in Europe, did not realize until very late the value of
writing chronicles or reviews of historic events. Thus the names of
heroes and kings of the remotest past are helplessly forgotten, save as
they come to us in legend and folk-song, much of which we must
conclude is imaginary, beautiful as it is. But Mother Earth has revealed
to us, at the spade of the archaeologist, trustworthy and irrefutable
accounts of the age and the various degrees of civilization of the race
which inhabited the Scandinavian Peninsula in prehistoric times.
Splendid specimens now extant in numerous museums prove that
Scandinavia, like most other countries, has had a Stone Age, a Bronze
Age, and an Iron Age, and that each of these periods reached a much
higher development than in other countries.
The Scandinavian countries are for the first time mentioned by the
historians of antiquity in an account of a journey which Pyteas from
Massilia (the present Marseille) made throughout Northern Europe,
about 300 B.C. He visited Britain, and there heard of a great country,
Thule, situated six days' journey to the north, and verging on the Arctic
Sea. The inhabitants in Thule were an agricultural people who gathered
their harvest into big houses for threshing, on account of the very few
sunny days and the plentiful rain in their regions. From corn and honey
they prepared a beverage (probably mead).
Pliny the Elder, who himself visited the shores of the Baltic in the first
century after Christ, is the first to mention plainly the name of
Scandinavia. He says that he has received advices of immense islands
"recently discovered from Germany." The most famous of these islands
was Scandinavia, of as yet unexplored size; the known parts were
inhabited by a people called hilleviones, who gave it the name of
another world. He mentions Scandia, Nerigon, the largest of them all,

and Thule. Scandia and Scandinavia are only different forms of the
same name, denoting the southernmost part of the peninsula, and still
preserved in the name of the province of Scania in Sweden. Nerigon
stands for Norway, the northern part of which is mentioned as an island
by the name of Thule. The classical writers were ignorant of the fact
that Scandinavia was one great peninsula, because the northern parts
were as yet uninhabited and their physical connection with Finland and
Russia unknown. That the Romans were later acquainted with the
Scandinavian countries is evidenced from the fact that great numbers of
Roman coins have been found in excavating, also vessels of bronze and
glass, weapons, etc., as well as works of art, all turned out of the
workshops in Rome or its provinces. There, no doubt, existed a regular
traffic over the Baltic, through Germany, between the Scandinavian
countries and the Roman provinces.
The first settlers probably knew little of agriculture, but made their
living by fishing and hunting. In time, however, they commenced to
clear away the timber that covered the land in the valleys and on the
sides of the mountains and to till the ground. At the earliest times of
which the historical tales or Sagas tell us anything with regard to the
social conditions, the land