ut Northern Europe,
about 300 B.C. He visited Britain, and there heard of a great country,
Thule, situated six days' journey to the north, and verging on the
Arctic Sea. The inhabitants in Thule were an agricultural people who
gathered their harvest into big houses for threshing, on account of
the very few sunny days and the plentiful rain in their regions. From
corn and honey they prepared a beverage (probably mead).

Pliny the Elder, who himself visited the shores of the Baltic in the
first century after Christ, is the first to mention plainly the name
of Scandinavia. He says that he has received advices of immense
islands "recently discovered from Germany." The most famous of these
islands was Scandinavia, of as yet unexplored size; the known parts
were inhabited by a people called _hilleviones_, who gave it the name
of another world. He mentions Scandia, Nerigon, the largest of them
all, and Thule. Scandia and Scandinavia are only different forms of
the same name, denoting the southernmost part of the peninsula, and
still preserved in the name of the province of Scania in Sweden.
Nerigon stands for Norway, the northern part of which is mentioned as
an island by the name of Thule. The classical writers were ignorant
of the fact that Scandinavia was one great peninsula, because the
northern parts were as yet uninhabited and their physical connection
with Finland and Russia unknown. That the Romans were later acquainted
with the Scandinavian countries is evidenced from the fact that great
numbers of Roman coins have been found in excavating, also vessels of
bronze and glass, weapons, etc., as well as works of art, all turned
out of the workshops in Rome or its provinces. There, no doubt,
existed a regular traffic over the Baltic, through Germany, between
the Scandinavian countries and the Roman provinces.

The first settlers probably knew little of agriculture, but made their
living by fishing and hunting. In time, however, they commenced to
clear away the timber that covered the land in the valleys and on the
sides of the mountains and to till the ground. At the earliest times
of which the historical tales or _Sagas_ tell us anything with
regard to the social conditions, the land was divided among the free
peasant-proprietors, or _bonde class_. Bonde, in English translation,
is usually called peasant; but this is not an equivalent; for with the
word "peasant" we associate the idea of inferior social condition to
the