The Saami Peoples from the Time of the Voyage of Ottar to Thomas von Westen

The history of the discovery and-understanding of the Saami peoples can be divided into three periods. The-earliest record goes back to Tacitus, who in his Germania describes the Fenni as savages, since they had neither weapons nor horses, dressed in animal skins, slept on the ground, and used bone weapon tips for hunting because of their ignorance of iron. About A.D. 150 Rolemy wrote of the Phinn0.i. Not until the De bello gothico of Prokopius, towards A.D. 550, were they called "Skrithiphinoi", an allusion to their ability to slide on wooden planks; in the De origine artihus Getarum of Jordanes, a contemporary of Prokopius, they are referred to as Screre,fennae and Sirdfenni. This prehistory of the Sammi peoples can be said to end with the History of the Langobards by .Paulus Diaconus (Varnefrid) about AD. 780, which adds.to the previous knowledge of the Scritobini or Scritovinni the information that they used reindeer (though not named thus explicitly) and that they lived in a country of the midnight sun in summer and of endless darkness in winter.