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<P align="justify"> These mythical S … <P align="justify"> These mythical Scandinavian beings appear in certain speculations that were current before critical historiography became established; the speculations regarded the Saami as the autochthonous people of the whole of Scandinavia ([[Theories of origin (pre-scientific)|Theories of Origin (pre-scientific)]]). In the nineteenth century, support for this view, which in itself was plausible, was sought mainly from two sources; folklore and archaeology. The Dvergs and the Jotuns were claimed to have inhabited the land before the invasions of the Geats and the Sveas (Scandinavian tribes), who are considered to be the forefathers of the Swedish people. </P>
<P align="justify"> Interest in Scandinavian mythology was lively in the nineteenth century under the influence of the Romantic movement, and attempts were made to find historical explanations for many mythical names and stories. In the 1830s, Erik Gustav Geijer (1783-1847), one of the leaders of the Swedish Romantic movement, proposed that the dwarf-like Dvergs, whom he considered to be the forefathers of the Saami, were the original inhabitants of Scandinavia before the intrusions of the Geats and Sveas. Previously, in the 1820s, he had claimed that the Saami were descended from the Jotuns rather than the Dvergs, but he renounced this view because according to folk legend the Jotuns were giants. Sven Nilsson (1787-1884), the father of Swedish archaeology, adopted Geijer s later idea. Nilsson found evidence for the theory in archaeological discoveries, on the basis of which he claimed that the Dvergs were the original autochthonous people of the whole of northern Europe. The most important proponent of the Dverg theory in Finland was Yrjö Koskinen (1830-1903), who agreed with Nilsson s ideas, but also believed that the Jotuns had taken the land from the Dvergs before the invasions of the Scandinavians. According to David Skogman, who in 1870 elaborated on Koskinen s theory, the tribe referred to by Tacitus as the Fenni were the common forefathers of the Dvergs and the Jotuns. These had later split for ecological reasons, and had subsequently developed into the Dvergs (Saami) and the Jotuns (Finns). Soon after Skogman this kind of speculative theorizing became obsolete in serious scholarship.</P>obsolete in serious scholarship.</P> +
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