Part 909

SAXONY: A. D. 1740. The War of the Austrian Succession: Claims of the Elector upon Austrian territory.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1740 (OCTOBER).

SAXONY: A. D. 1741. The War of the Austrian Succession: Alliance against Austria.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1741 (AUGUST-NOVEMBER).

SAXONY: A. D. 1745. The War of the Austrian Succession: Alliance with Austria. Subjugation by Prussia. The Peace of Dresden.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1744-1745.

SAXONY: A. D. 1755. Intrigues with Austria and Russia against Prussia. Causes of the Seven Years War.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1755-1756.

SAXONY: A. D. 1756. Swift subjugation by Frederick of Prussia.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1756.

SAXONY: A. D. 1759-1760. Occupied by the Austrians. Mostly recovered by Frederick.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1759 (JULY-NOVEMBER); and 1760.

SAXONY: A. D. 1763. The end and results of the Seven Years War. The electorate restored.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR: THE TREATIES.

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SAXONY: A. D. 1806.

The Elector, deserting Prussia, becomes the subject-ally of Napoleon, and is made a king.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).

SAXONY: A. D. 1807. Acquisition by the king of the grand duchy of Warsaw.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1807 (JUNE-JULY).

SAXONY: A. D. 1809. Risings against the French.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (APRIL-JULY).

SAXONY: A. D. 1813. Occupied by the Allies. Regained by the French. Humiliating submission of the king to Napoleon. French victory at Dresden and defeat at Leipsic. Desertion from Napoleon's army by the Saxons. The king a prisoner in the hands of the Allies. French surrender of Dresden.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1812-1813, to 1813 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).

SAXONY: A. D. 1814-1815. The Saxon question in the Congress of Vienna. The king restored, with half of his dominions lost.

See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

SAXONY: A. D. 1817. Accession to the Holy Alliance.

See HOLY ALLIANCE.

SAXONY: A. D. 1848 (March). Revolutionary outbreak. Concessions to the people.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1848 (MARCH).

SAXONY: A. D. 1849. Insurrection suppressed by Prussian troops.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1848-1850.

SAXONY: A. D. 1866. The Seven Weeks War. Indemnity to Prussia. Union with the North German Confederation. See GERMANY: A. D. 1866.

SAXONY: A. D. 1870-1871. Embraced in the new German Empire.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1870 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER); 1871 (JANUARY); and 1871 (APRIL).

SAXONY: End--------

SAXONY, The English titular Dukedom of.

See WALES, PRINCE OF.

SCALDIS, The. The ancient name of the river Scheldt.

SCALDS, OR SKALDS, The.

"Before the introduction or general diffusion of writing, it is evident that a class of men whose sole occupation was to commit to memory and preserve the laws, usages, precedents, and details of all those civil affairs and rights, and to whose fidelity in relating former transactions implicit confidence could be given, must of necessity have existed in society—must have been in every locality. … This class [among the Scandinavian peoples of the North of Europe] were the Scalds—the men who were the living books, to be referred to in every case of law or property in which the past had to be applied to the present. Before the introduction of Christianity, and with Christianity the use of written documents, and the diffusion, by the church establishment, of writing in every locality, the scald must have been among the pagan landowners what the parish priest and his written record were in the older Christianised countries of Europe. … The scalds in these Christianised countries were merely a class of wandering troubadours, poets, story-tellers, minnesingers. … The scalds of the north disappeared at once when Christian priests were established through the country. They were superseded in their utility by men of education, who knew the art of writing; and the country had no feudal barons to maintain such a class for amusement only. We hear little of the scalds after the first half of the 12th century."

_S. Laing, The Heimskringla: Preliminary Dissertation, chapter 1._

"At the dawn of historical times we find the skalds practising their art everywhere in the North. … The oldest Norwegian skalds, like 'Starkad' and 'Brage the Old,' are enveloped in mythic darkness, but already, in the time of Harald Fairhair (872-930), the song-smiths of the Scandinavian North appear as thoroughly historical personages. In Iceland the art of poetry was held in high honor, and it was cultivated not only by the professional skalds, but also by others when the occasion presented itself. … When the Icelander had arrived at the age of maturity, he longed to travel in foreign lands. As a skald he would then visit foreign kings and other noblemen, where he would receive a most hearty welcome. … These Icelandic skalds became a very significant factor in the literary development of the North during the greater part of the middle ages."

_F. W. Horn, History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North, part 1, chapter 1._

SCALIGERI, The, or Della Scala Family.

See VERONA: A. D. 1260-1338; also, MILAN: A. D. 1277-1447.

SCAMANDER, The.

See TROJA.

SCANDERBEG'S WAR WITH THE TURKS.

See ALBANIANS: A. D. 1443-1467.

SCANDINAVIAN STATES: Start--------

SCANDINAVIAN STATES: Early history.

"Those who lean implicitly on the chief props supplied by the Old Norse literature for the early history and genealogy of the North lean on very unsafe supports. The fact is, we must treat these genealogies and these continuous histories as compilations made up from isolated and detached traditions—epics in which some individual or some battle was described, and in which the links and the connections between the pieces have been supplied according to the ingenuity of the compilers; in which the arrangement and chronology are to a large extent arbitrary; and in which it has been a great temptation to transfer the deeds of one hero to another of the same name. Under these circumstances what is a modern historian to do? In the first place he must take the contemporary chronicles—Frank, English, and Irish—as his supreme guides, and not allow their statements to be perverted by the false or delusive testimony of the sagas, and where the two are at issue, sacrifice the latter without scruple, while in those cases where we have no contemporary and independent evidence then to construct as best we can our story from the glimmers of light that have reached us."

_H. H. Howorth, Early History of Sweden (Royal Historical Society, Transactions, volume 9)._

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SCANDINAVIAN STATES: Their relationships in language and blood.

"Scandinavia is not a very convenient word. Norway and Sweden it suits; because, in Norway and Sweden, the geographical boundaries coincide with the phenomena of language and blood. But Denmark is not only divided from them by water, but is in actual contact with Germany. More than this, it is connected with the Empire: Holstein being German and Imperial, Sleswick partly German though not Imperial. … Generically, a Scandinavian is a German. Of the great German stock there are two divisions—the Scandinavian or Norse, and the Teutonic or German Proper. Of the Germans Proper, the nearest congeners to the Scandinavians are the Frisians; and, after them, the Saxons. … At present the languages of Sweden and Denmark, though mutually intelligible, are treated as distinct: the real differences being exaggerated by differences of orthography, and by the use on the part of the Swedes of the ordinary Italian alphabet, whilst the Danes prefer the old German black-letter. The literary Norwegian is Danish rather than Swedish. Meanwhile, the old language, the mother-tongue, is the common property of all, and so is the old literature with its Edda and Sagas; though … the Norwegians are the chief heroes of it. The language in which it is embodied is preserved with but little alteration in Iceland; so that it may fairly be called Icelandic, though the Norwegians denominate it Old Norse. …

See NORMANS—NORTHMEN. A. D. 960-1100.

The histories of the three countries are alike in their general character though different in detail. Denmark when we have got away from the heroic age into the dawn of the true historical period, is definitely separated from Germany in the parts about the Eyder—perhaps by the river itself. It is Pagan and Anti-Imperial; the Danes being, in the eyes of the Carlovingians, little better than the hated Saxons. Nor is it ever an integral part of the Empire; though Danish and German alliances are common. They end in Holstein being Danish, and in its encroaching on Sleswick and largely influencing the kingdom in general. As being most in contact with the civilization of the South, Denmark encroaches on Sweden, and, for a long time, holds Skaane and other Swedish districts. Indeed, it is always a check upon the ambition of its northern neighbour. Before, then, that Sweden becomes one and indivisible, the Danes have to be ejected from its southern provinces. Norway, too, when dynastic alliances begin and when kingdoms become consolidated, is united with Denmark. … In the way of language the Scandinavians are Germans—the term being taken in its wider and more general sense. Whether the blood coincide with the language is another question; nor is it an easy one. The one point upon which most ethnologists agree, is the doctrine that, in Norway and Sweden (at least), or in the parts north of the Baltic, the Germans are by no means aboriginal; the real aborigines having been congeners of either the Laps or the Fins; who, at a time anterior to the German immigrations, covered the whole land from the North Cape to the Naze in Norway, and from Tornea to Ystadt in Sweden. Towards these aborigines the newer occupants comported themselves much as the Angles of England comported themselves towards the Britons. At the same time, in both Britain and Scandinavia the extent to which the two populations intermarried or kept separate is doubtful. It may be added that, in both countries, there are extreme opinions on each side of the question."

_R. G. Latham, The Nationalities of Europe, volume 2, chapter 37._

See, also, GOTHS, ORIGIN OF THE.

ALSO IN: _A. Lefèvre, Race and Language, page 236._

SCANDINAVIAN STATES: 8-9th Centuries. Explorations, ravages and conquests of the Vikings.

See NORMANS.—NORTHMEN.

SCANDINAVIAN STATES: 8-11th Centuries. Formation of the Three Kingdoms.

"At the end of the 8th century, … within the two Scandinavian peninsulas, the three Scandinavian nations were fast forming. A number of kindred tribes were settling down into the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which, sometimes separate, sometimes united, have existed ever since. Of these three, Denmark, the only one which had a frontier towards the Empire, was naturally the first to play a part in general European history. In the course of the 10th century, under the half-mythical Gorm, and his successors Harold and Sven, the Danish kingdom itself, as distinguished from other lands held in aftertimes by its kings, reached nearly its full historical extent in the two peninsulas and the islands between them. Halland and Skane or Scania, it must always be remembered, are from the beginning at least as Danish as Zealand and Jutland. The Eider remained the frontier towards the Empire, save during part of the 10th and 11th centuries, when the Danish frontier withdrew to the Dannewerk, and the laud between the two boundaries formed the Danish March of the Empire. Under Cnut the old frontier was restored. The name of Northmen, which the Franks used in a laxer way for the Scandinavian nations generally, was confined to the people of Norway. These were formed into a single kingdom under Harold Harfraga late in the 9th century. The Norwegian realm of that day stretched far beyond the bounds of the later Norway, having an indefinite extension over tributary Finnish tribes as far as the White Sea. The central part of the eastern side of the northern peninsula, between Denmark to the south and the Finnish nations to the north, was held by two Scandinavian settlements which grew into the Swedish kingdom. These were those of the Swedes strictly so called, and of the Geatas or Gauts. This last name has naturally been confounded with that of the Goths, and has given the title of 'King of the Goths' to the princes of Sweden. Gothland, east and west, lay on each side of Lake Wettern. Swithiod or Svealand, Sweden proper, lay on both sides of the great arm of the sea whose entrance is guarded by the modern capital. The union of Svealand and Gothland made up the kingdom of Sweden. Its early boundaries towards both Denmark and Norway were fluctuating. Wermeland, immediately to the north of Lake Wenern, and Jamteland farther to the north, were long a debatable land. At the beginning of the 12th century Wermeland passed finally to Sweden, and Jamteland for several ages to Norway. Bleking again, at the southeast corner of the Peninsula, was a debatable land between Sweden and Denmark which passed to Denmark. For a land thus bounded the natural course of extension by land lay to the north, along the west coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. In the course of the 11th century at the latest, Sweden began to spread itself in that direction over Helsingland. Sweden had thus a better opportunity than Denmark and Norway for extension of her own borders by land. Meanwhile Denmark and Norway, looking to the west, had their great time of Oceanic conquest and colonization in the 9th and 10th centuries."

_E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 11, section 1._

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"Till about the year of Grace 860 there were no kings in Norway, nothing but numerous jarls,—essentially kinglets,—each presiding over a kind of republican or parliamentary little territory; generally striving each to be on some terms of human neighbourhood with those about him, but, in spite of 'Fylke Things' (Folk Things)—little parish parliaments —and small combinations of these, which had gradually formed themselves, often reduced to the unhappy state of quarrel with them. Harald Haarfagr was the first to put an end to this state of things, and become memorable and profitable to his country by uniting it under one head and making a kingdom of it; which it has continued to be ever since. His father, Halfdan the Black, had already begun this rough but salutary process, … but it was Harald the Fairhaired, his son, who conspicuously carried it on and completed it. Harald's birth-year, death-year, and chronology in general, are known only by inference and computation; but, by the latest reckoning, he died about the year 933 of our era, a man of 83. The business of conquest lasted Harald about twelve years (A. D. 860-872?), in which he subdued also the Vikings of the out-islands, Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides, and Man. Sixty more years were given him to consolidate and regulate what he had conquered, which he did with great judgment, industry, and success. His reign altogether is counted to have been of over 70 years. … These were the times of Norse colonization; proud Norsemen flying into other lands, to freer scenes,—to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, which were hitherto quite vacant (tenanted only by some mournful hermit, Irish Christian fakir, or so); still more copiously to the Orkney and Shetland Isles, the Hebrides and other countries where Norse squatters and settlers already were. Settlement of Iceland, we say, settlement of the Faroe Islands, and, by far the notablest of all, settlement of Normandy by Rolf the Ganger (A. D. 876?)."

_T. Carlyle, The Early Kings of Norway, chapter 1._

SCANDINAVIAN STATES: 9th Century. Introduction of Christianity.

See CHRISTIANITY: 9-11TH CENTURIES.

SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1018-1397. The empire of Canute and its dissolution. Disturbed state of the Three Kingdoms. The Folkungas in Sweden. Rise of Denmark. The reign of Queen Margaret and the Union of Calmar.

"A Northern Empire … for a time seemed possible when Canute the Great arose. King by inheritance of England and of Denmark, he was able by successful war to add almost the whole of Norway to his dominions.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 979-1016, and 1016-1042