Kvenland - Hversu Noregr Byggdist and Orkneyinga Saga

Hversu Noregr Byggdist and Orkneyinga Saga

For more details on this topic, see Kings of Kvenland.

The more legendary of the two sagas mentioning Kvenland exists in two very different versions. They are known as Hversu Noregr byggdist and Orkneyinga saga. Orkeyinga is written around 1200 CE by an unknown Icelandic author. Hversu is only known to have survived in one single copy in Icelandic Flateyjarbók from 1387 CE, but may have been written earlier. Orkneyinga makes a bold claim that Norwegian rulers were descendants of the king Fornjót that "reigned over Gotland, which we now know as Finland and Kvenland". Hversu is more modest and only states that a descendant of Fornjót "ruled over Gothland, Kvenland (Kænlandi), and Finland". A DNA study conducted on the prehistoric skeletal remains of four individuals from Gotland supports the area having been ethnically interconnected with Finland and Kvenland during the primeval era:

"The hunter-gatherers show the greatest similarity to modern-day Finns", says Pontus Skoglund, an evolutionary geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Whether or not Fornjót and his closest followers, mentioned in other sagas as well, were fictitious figures or actual historical people has been debated. Kyösti Julku notes that no geographical errors have been found in the descriptions of the Orkneyinga saga. He asks why therefore the people described in the account should be considered not to have existed. Noteworthy is also that Fornjót's great-grandson Old Snow is briefly mentioned in Ynglingasaga, in relation to Finland. The Orkneyinga saga contains a realistic description of Nór traveling from Kvenland to Norway. Based on the saga's internal chronologies, this would have happened around the 6th or 7th century CE, but the dating is very insecure. Locations of Kvenland, Finland and Gotland are given rather exactly:

-- to the east of the gulf that lies across from the White Sea (Gandvík); we call that the Gulf of Bothnia (Helsingjabotn).

The saga is correct in placing the Gulf of Bothnia "across" (i.e. "on the other side of" the isthmus between the two seas) from the White Sea. The saga does not say that Kvenland was on the coast, but just east of the Gulf.

This is how Nór started his journey to Norway:

But Nor, his brother, waited until snow lay on the moors so he could travel on snow-shoes. He went out from Kvenland and skirted the Gulf, and came to that place inhabited by the men called Sami (Lapps); that is beyond Finnmark.

Having travelled for a while, Nór was still "beyond Finnmark". After a brief fight with Sami people (Lapps), Nór continued:

But Nor went thence westward to the Kjolen Mountains and for a long time they knew nothing of men, but shot beasts and birds to feed to themselves, until they came to a place where the rivers flowed west of the mountains. -- Then he went up along the valleys that run south of the fjord. That fjord is now called Trondheim.

Starting somewhere on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, Nór had either went all the way up and around the Gulf, or skied across—it was winter, and the Gulf might have been frozen. Nór ended up attacking the area around Trondheim in central Norway and later the lake district in the south, conquering the country and uniting it under his rule. There is no mention of Kvenland after that any more. Again only a handful of words had been reserved for Kvenland mainly telling where it was or had been. Nór's journey from Kvenland to Norway is missing from Hversu. In fact, Hversu does not even mention that Nór came from Kvenland at all, only stating that "Norr had great battles west of the Keel". The journey may have been lifted from some other context and added to Orkneyinga in a later phase by an unknown author that wanted to make the saga more adventurous. However, the conflict itself between Kvens and Norwegians remains a fact as verified by Ohthere even though it might not have ended in the conquest of Norway.