Kvenland/Kainuunkylä/Kajaniland
Kvenland - Terra Feminarum
EXPLORING THE ROOTS OF EUROPEAN ROYAL FAMILIES
Kven leaders of Fennoscandia gave birth to Norway and Sweden and to the Yngling and Rurik Dynasties, from which founders and rulers of many countries descended.
Kven News provides news and articles pertaining to the history and origins of these rulers, and the territory referred to in medieval accounts as Kvenland.
Finnic synonyms for the non-Finnic term Kvenland – written in this and various close to this spellings – include the terms Pohjola, Kainu, Kainuu and Kainuunmaa.
Mission: Based on a large amount of evidence, the Kvens are indigenous people - natives - to Scandinavia, Fennoscandia and the area of the modern-day Northwestern Russia, similarly to the Sami people.
This site was established to help spread awareness of this fact and to correct misconceptions and myths related to the history of the primeval and medieval Northern Europe.
Description
Kven people (Cwen, Kvæn, Quen, Qven, kveeni) - kainulainen, kainuulainen or kveeni in Finnish and Kven languages - are a Finnish tribe of people.
The Kvens have continuously inhabited Scandinavia, Fennoscandia and some of the surrounding areas since the end of the last ice age, c. 9000 BC, and possibly long before as well.
At some point, the neighbors of the Kvens - presumably first the Norse -began referring to them as Kvens and their land as Kvenland.
The Kvens and their Finnic neighbors have historically referred to the Kvens as kainulainen and/or kainuulainen and their land as Kainu, Kainuu, Kainuunmaa (Kainuu "land") and Pohjola ("North").
The ethnically and culturally separate people, the Sami, are indigenous largely to the same areas as the Kvens. The cultures, lifestyles and traditions of the two peoples have been very different since as far back as is known, and in medieval accounts the two peoples are always discussed separately and they are defined as separate peoples.
Over a long time period, the size of Kvenland gradually shrunk. In the end of the Viking Age, it still covered nearly all of the middle and northern parts of Scandinavia and the modern-day Finland, as well as all of the Kola Peninsula (located in the extreme northwestern part of today's Russia), based on medieval accounts.
Over the last two millenniums, the Kven population and their culture have slowly assimilated and mixed with the rest of the Nordic populations, greatly contributing to and melting with what have become Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
However, still today the unique and distinct Finnic Kven culture is alive and strong, represented most visibly in Northern Scandinavia by the Kvens of Norway and the Tornedalians - the Swedish Kvens - in Sweden.
In the modern-day area of Finland, over centuries, the Kven people and their culture have melted together with the people and cultures of other nearby Finnic tribes, such as the Tavastians, Savonians and Karelians, into what Finland and the Finnish people are today.
Remains of the ancient Kven culture in the modern Finland can be best detected in the area of the historical province of Ostrobothnia in Finland, which includes the modern province of Kainuu in Finland.
In the end of the Finnish-Soviet Continuation War, a vast majority of the Kvens of the modern-day extreme Northwestern Russia were resettled to Finland.
Based on the Norse sagas and other medieval accounts, the ruling families of England, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Normandy, Norway, the Orkney Islands, Russia, Scotland and Sweden - among many others - descended from the kings of Kvenland and Finland.
Text source:
http://kvenland.org/
https://www.facebook.com/Kvenland
https://www.facebook.com/Rurikid