Kvenland, Norway
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Kvenland, known as Cwenland, Qwenland, Kænland, and similar terms in medieval sources, is an ancient name for an area in Fennoscandia and Scandinavia. Kvenland, in that or nearly that spelling, is known from an Old English account written in the 9th century, which used information provided by Norwegian adventurer and traveler Ohthere, and from Nordic sources, primarily Icelandic. A possible additional source was written in the modern-day area of Norway. All known Nordic sources date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Other possible references to Kvenland by other names and spellings are also discussed here.
Repeated claims about there in mediaeval times having existed a country named Kvenland, populated by a Finnish-speaking people named Kvens, have reappeared in modern times in northern Sweden and northern Finland, amid claims that the "Kvens" not only are an indigenous people in northern Sweden and Finland, but the indigenous people there. Claims that are directly connected to a struggle over the rights to hunt and fish in very large areas in northern Fennoscandia, between the Sami people, who are the recognised indigenous people of the area, and the Swedish- and Finnish-speaking population there. There are, however, no documented or in any other way proven connection between the people in northern Sweden and Finland who now claim to be Kvens, and the geographical area, and people who lived there, that in mediaeval times were referred to as Kvenland and Kvens. |
A possible, but incorrect, location of Kvenland and Nór's route to the fjord of Trondheim. Note that Kvenland can be placed elsewhere east of Gulf of Bothnia as well. The selected location on the map is the one with most archaeological finds. Most interpretations locate Kvenland in the less well researched northern coastal area on the Bothnian Bay.
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