Kvenland, Finland
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The historical province of Kvenland is mentioned in Norwegian and Islandic sources in various political discourses. From the late ninth century up to the thirteenth century it was depicted as a province inhabited by fishers and warrior groups, called Kvens. In these sources Kvenland is always located east of the mountain range separating Norway and Sweden. In the medieval sources the political area of Kvenland was variously depicted as comprising all the area north of Swedish Svealand, as in the Viking Age source, to being more specifically located between the provinces of Hälsingland, Finnmark, Finland and Karelia (Green 1893, 23; Ross 1940, 5–23; Fell 1983, 5–65; Egil Skallagrimssons Saga 1989, 30; Opsahl 2003, 23–60).1 In the mid-eighteenth century Kvenland was more exactly located on both sides of the estuary of the Torne River on the northernmost shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, and from there widening along its tributaries up to the Norwegian border about 350–500 km northwest of the coast. This location was determined in the Norwegian border protocols that were part of the negotiations concerning the northern part of the Norwegian-Swedish border (Schnitler [1742–1745] 1962, XX–XXV). It comprises the area recognized today as Finnish and Swedish Tornedalen. At that time it had a mainly Finnish-speaking population in its lower part nearer the coast, and a Sámi-speaking population in the upper part.
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Despite occasional descriptive references from early writers such as Tacitus, pre-Viking Kvenland is shrouded in the mystery of a people with no writing and a lost oral tradition.
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