ABSTRACT The earliest history of the Swedish Realm’s northern regions has long been contested in historiography. This article primarily analyses views in seventeenth-century Swedish historiography concerning the origins of Finns in this region, in terms of source usage and ethnic identities. Gothicist views, emphasizing Swedish greatness were based on biblical notions of a postdiluvial settlement, linking sources from classical antiquity to Sweden via etymological comparisons. Combined with a reliance on Icelandic sagas and the uncritical use of secondary sources, these notions gave rise, among others, to the idea of an ancient, partially Finnish, Amazon warrior realm in Ostrobothnia. Conceptions surrounding the origins of Birkarl tax collectors were mostly based on traditions collected in the early 1600s, and later that century, they became associated with a migration of Finns to the north thought to have taken place in the late 13th century. Finns were given a role in the region’s history even within Gothicist historiography too. The ethnicity of these early settlements does not seem to have been overly emphasized though – indeed the boundary between Finns and Swedes was seen more as something fluid – indicating that ethnosymbolist theories of nationalism overstate the importance of ethnic identity in early modern Sweden.

中文翻译：

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难以捉摸的芬兰人：十七世纪瑞典史学中的民族身份、资料来源批评和瑞典北部的早期历史

摘要 瑞典王国北部地区最早的历史长期以来一直受到史学界的争议。本文主要分析 17 世纪瑞典史学中关于该地区芬兰人起源的观点，包括来源使用和民族认同。哥特式观点强调瑞典的伟大，是基于圣经中关于后洪水时代定居点的概念，通过词源比较将古典古代的来源与瑞典联系起来。结合对冰岛传奇的依赖和对二手资料的不加批判的使用，这些概念产生了在 Ostrobothnia 建立一个古老的、部分芬兰的亚马逊战士王国的想法。围绕 Birkarl 税吏起源的概念主要基于 1600 年代早期和该世纪后期收集的传统，它们与被认为发生在 13 世纪后期的芬兰人向北迁移有关。芬兰人在该地区的历史中也占有一席之地，甚至在哥特式史学中也是如此。不过，这些早期定居点的种族似乎并没有被过分强调——事实上，芬兰人和瑞典人之间的界限更像是一种流动的东西——表明民族主义的民族象征主义理论夸大了现代瑞典早期民族认同的重要性。