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THE NORTH

337

inconceivable that the Volkerwanderung drained off this element in dis­proportionate numbers, and that the reemergence of older forms has been a result of this process, especially in Denmark, in western Norway, and in southern Sweden, where the older forms were originally most numerous. The three Scandinavian kingdoms, and especially eastern Norway and Sweden as a whole, remain the greatest single reservoir of the Iron Age Nordic race, but it is conceivable that that race was numerically more important in Scandinavia at the time of Christ than it is today.

  1. The finno-ugrians, introduction

The next step in our survey of the living peoples of northern Europe leads us from Scandinavia, the present Nordic homeland, across the Baltic Sea to the countries in which the East Baltic race is most characteristic; the four republics of Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. We pro­pose to study first the two northernmost, in which languages of the Finno- Ugrian family are spoken. But this will be done in a roundabout fashion, since before the racial history of the Baltic Finns may be fully understood, it will be necessary to deal with the entire ethnic and linguistic group of which they form a part. For this reason it will also be necessary to inter­rupt the geographical order tentatively followed, and to start with the Finnish homelands in eastern Russia. In an earlier chapter (Chapter VII, section 1), a survey was made of the skeletal remains of early Finno- Ugrian-speaking peoples of this region; some mention was also made con­cerning their early ethnic movements. It is the purpose of the present section to explain in a little more detail the linguistic and historic relation­ships of modern Finno-Ugrian-speaking peoples.67

For the sake of clarity, we will repeat that Finno-Ugrian, along with Samoyedic, forms the Uralic linguistic stock or sub-stock which may or may not be united with Turkic, Tungusic, and Mongolian in a Ural- Altaic superstock. It is now believed that early Finno-Ugrian was one of the two elements which blended to form basic Indo-European.68 Although today their use is not as extensive as that of Indo-European, modern Finno-Ugrian languages are by no means archaic, and show no tendency toward disappearance. They are, in fact, spoken by a large number of peoples, living under extremely variable environmental and cultural con­ditions, and scattered over a wide expanse of territory. In three nations,

67 Useful sources are:

Atlas of Finland, 1925, esp. Wichman, Y., pp. 19-22.

Jochelson, W., The Peoples of Asiatic Russia, esp. pp. 16-21.

Sirelius, U. T., The Genealogy of the Finns.

Zolotarev, D. A., Etnicheskit Sostav Nasaleniid, Sev,-£ap. Oblasti i KareVskoX ASSR; ibid., TKIP, vol. 15, #2, 1928, pp. 1-26.

68 See Chapter VI, sections 1 and 8, Chapter VII, sections 1 and 3.

338

THE RACES OF EUROPE

Finland, Esthonia, and Hungary, divisions of Finno-Ugrian are the official languages, spoken by millions of people. In western Siberia, as well as in these countries, Finno-Ugrian speech occupies a large space on the map, but in this wilderness of forest and swamp it is actually spoken by very few persons. Elsewhere, throughout eastern central Russia and

MAP 10

The Distribution of Uralic and Altaic Speech on European Soil

This does not include Osmanli Turkish as spoken in the former Turkish Empire. All Turkish speech is represented by crescents, Mongols by cross-hatching, and Sam- oyedic by small circles. Finno-Ugrian is represented by various types of lines and stipples, except for Lappish, which is indicated by crosses, and Livonian, which is solid. The northern instances of Carelian are Kvaenish.

thence in a narrow band across to the mouth of the Gulf of Finland, it is found in little islands standing out in the midst of Slavic territory.

Linguistic affiliations within the stock may best be illustrated by Ka- java’s chart, reproduced in slightly altered form below.69 In this chart the term Ingrians is used to include the various groups of Finnic speakers native to the Leningrad region; namely, the Vodes, the Lyds or Ijores, and the

» Kajava, Y., EA, #8, #9, 1922, pp. 353-358.

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