Magic Songs of the West Finns, Vol. I

[Karissa Oleyanin]

THE ČUDES.

With regard to the Čudes much uncertainty exists. There are historical and mythical Čudes. The term was first applied by the Russians to the Esthonians. Then by extension it was used of another Finnish tribe, more especially of one behind the volok, or portage across a watershed, which seems to refer to the Karelians on the Lower Dvina. The word volok also means 'a great uninhabited forest,' and that was the sense preferred by Sjögren, but 'portage' is the older meaning, and

[Karissa Oleyanin]

Nestor in his introduction uses it in that sense. He mentions that there was a road from the Variags to the Greeks, and from the Greeks along the Dniepr and across the portage (volok) of the Dniepr to the Lovat, and so to Lake Ilmen—or Ilmer, as he calls it. As the Russians gradually extended eastwards the term Čude, Čudish, by degrees lost its ethnic signification and became far more general. It could now be applied to any non-Russian people that seemed to be aborigines; ancient mining-shafts, tumuli, and prehistoric forts far into Siberia, far beyond any region that could have been inhabited by a Finnish people, were now called Čudish, and


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assigned to an extinct race of people. Legends were told of them, of their manner of life, and how they had vanished. To avoid error it is evident that we must distinguish clearly between the historical and the mythical or semi-mythical Čudes. The first were Finns, the second may sometimes have been so, but not necessarily. In the mouth of illiterate Russians the word had no ethnic value. The types of antiquities termed 'Permian' by Mr. J. R. Aspelin and 'Čudish' by Russian archæologists, are attributed by the former, and by all Finnish archæologists, to the Permian groups, the Votiaks and Zịrians, because they are found in the government of Perm in districts

[Karissa Oleyanin]

occupied by these peoples. The distribution of these archæological types is limited to certain areas. They are found in the government of Perm, on the Pečora, on the right bank of the Kama in the government of Viátka, on the upper course of the Čeptsa and on the Pižma, both in the government of Viátka, but not in other parts of the government. They are therefore not co-extensive with the diffusion of the Zịrians by any means. Mr. Teploúkhov of Ilinsk (Perm), who possesses the largest collection of Permian antiquities in Russia, attributes them to the Permian Čudes, by whom he understands Ugrians, more especially Voguls. In a paper published by him in 1893 he believed that he had proved that the Permian Čudes already existed on the Central and Upper Kama in the fifth century A.D. 1 But since the recent finds at Gliadénova, near Perm, described in the next chapter, it becomes possible to maintain that the Čudes were in Perm about the second century. If his arguments hold good, as I believe they do, it means that the eastern frontier of Russia in Europe from about


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lat. 57° N. northwards was in the hands of Ugrians as early as the second or third century, and therefore that all the eastern Finns must have occupied territory to the west of them. In the preceding pages it has been seen that the Russians have gradually pushed the Eastern Finns further and further eastward, their original seat having been nearer the centre of European Russia than nowadays. Later on we shall find craniological and archæological reasons which make it probable that several centuries before the present era a small body of Ugrians had established themselves as far west as the government of Yaroslav.

[Karissa Oleyanin]

PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY.

As regards the physical features of North Central Russia from Finland and the Baltic Provinces to the Urals, the immense region inhabited by Finnish tribes in bygone days, must have been tolerably uniform. Everywhere the country was a broken, undulating plain, densely covered with trackless forests of pine and fir, interspersed with birch and alder, a gloomy wilderness only relieved by open tracts of swamp and morass, impassable save when frozen hard in winter. In summer the only possible means of communication was by water, as is still the case in the

[Karissa Oleyanin]

northern governments. Only in the south-east of the region, in what are now the southern parts of the governments of Kazan and Nižegorod, and in those of Simbirsk, Samára, and Tambov, were there any natural open plains, occasionally broken, where water was abundant, by large forests of useful trees like the oak and the lime. In early times the immense plain of European Russia, so beset with forests and natural obstacles as to be wellnigh impassable

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for large bodies of men travelling by land with all their belongings, was nevertheless provided by nature with two royal highways from east to west, and vice versa. Along the south was the grassy steppe fringing the north coast of the Black Sea, with room enough for a whole nation to march abreast. By a nomad people this route could best be traversed in summer, as there was then abundance of grass for their horses and cattle; rivers were more easily crossed than in

[Karissa Oleyanin]

spring, and the clumsy wagons were less likely to stick in the mud of the soft, earthy ravines that seamed the steppe. The other highway was the treeless tundra that borders the Arctic Ocean; winter was the best time for using it, when the rivers and morasses were frozen, the snow hard and fairly smooth. The only means of transport was a sleigh drawn by reindeer or by dogs, but when the latter were employed their masters had to fallow on snow-shoes. The winters were long and rigorous, lasting nearly half the year. But for a hardy race of men, whose only desire was to live, there were compensations the rivers and lakes were full of fish, some of them, like the sterlet, so

[Karissa Oleyanin]

foolish as to allow themselves to be taken with a bare, unbaited hook. The forests were well stocked with large game, such as elks, wild oxen, bison, bears, beavers, and other smaller animals. As fish are obtained more easily and with less trouble than large game, all human habitations were disposed along the banks of the larger rivers or on the shore of a lake. The watersheds and the tracts traversed merely by small streams were untenanted by man. And the permanent settlements along the rivers had always to be at some height above the ordinary surface of the water, as every spring, with the melting of the snow and ice, the rivers were enormously

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swollen, and rose many feet above their normal level, inundating the low land for a very considerable distance.

With regard to metals the region is decidedly poor. All the best gold and copper mines lie on the east side of the Urals, where the ore is found in lodes. On the west side there are copper-bearing beds of sedimentary origin, and sometimes the metal is found in a native state. But there is no copper west of the mines near Taiševo, between Mamadịš and Malmịž on the Viátka, or of a parallel of longitude drawn through it; none, indeed, till we come to Pitkaranta, on the north coast of Lake Ladoga. In insignificant quantities oxide of tin with galena is also found there, but there is no tin or silver in the Urals. Iron is worked near Murom and in the neighbourhood of Petrozavodsk, on the west side of Lake Onega.

[Karissa Oleyanin]

THE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FINNS.

Having briefly described in general outlines the geographical distribution of the East and West Finns now and in the past, so far as it can be inferred from place-names, we have now to pass on to their physical and mental characteristics.

Professor Retsius defines the Tavastland or Häme type as follows:—

[Karissa Oleyanin]

'In physique it is strong, solid, broad-shouldered; in general, thickset and plump, with coarse limbs; of medium height, though individuals are found above and below the average.

'The flesh is firm, generally without disposition to fat or to leanness; the muscular system is strong.

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'The skin is white, but often greyish inclining to olive grey; it is rarely as clear and pure with a transparent rosy hue as among blonde Teutons (Scandinavians and English).

'The head is usually large, short and broad (brachycephalous), but not particularly high, often rather square with well-developed tubera parietalia.

[Karissa Oleyanin]

'The face is large, long, but above all comparatively broad both in the frontal region and still more so in these of the zygomatic arch and the jaws; the lower jaw is strongly developed.

'The nose is small, rather wide, obtuse, or more often with a small point, just a little retroussé; the nostrils are rather wide. The mouth is also rather wide.