Viking Age

Finland is the easternmost of the Nordic countries-a land of woods and women if we are to believe Adam of Bremen andsome of his commentators. Finland was unknown to most Europeans during the Viking Age and, to those who did know about it, it was a land of mists and monsters. Swedes and Gotlanders were the only people who were more knowledgeable about the inhabitants of Finland. They were probably the only ones who realised that the Finns were not Saami, but people very similar to Scandinavians. Their language was different, but there were certainly some people along the coast of Finland who understood Swedish and traded with the Scandinavians.

The Finns lived mainly in the southern part of the Finnish mainland, along the seacoast and on the shores of inland lakes. To the east and north lived hunters and fishers who may either have been ancestors of the Saami (Lapps) or of some other branch, of the widespread Finno-Ugrians. Before the Slavs migrated to the north, vast areas of northern Europe formed the hunting and fishing territories of Finnish tribes, many of which, in contrast to the Finns in Finland, became extinct through assimilation with other peoples.

The Finns in Finland had begun to cultivate cereals long before the beginning of our era, and wheat, barley, rye and oats were grown during the Viking Age. Although they mainly practised slash-and-burn cultivation, there must also by then have been permanent fields. One of the areas with such fields was Eura (close to Turku in western Finland), where most of the richest Viking-age remains are to be found.

Animals played a prominent part in burial ceremonies. From the material found in burial contexts we know that all the most important domestic animals were kept-cattle, horses, sheep/goats and pigs. Dogs were also buried with many of the men and some women, but no traces of cats have been found. One animal, not domesticated but apparently very important to the Finns, was the bear. There are bears' teeth and claws among the bones from cremation cemeteries, and bears' teeth and bronze pendants modelled on them were attached to the breast-chains and clothes of the women. (The National Board of Antiquities, 2001)