The origin of the name ''Kven'' is unclear. The name appears for the first time in a 9th-century

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

version, written by King Alfred of Wessex, of a work by the Roman author Orosius, in the plural form ''Cwenas''. Today, however, ''

Kven KVEN (1520 AM, "La Voz 1520 AM & 96.3 FM") is a commercial radio station that is licensed to Port Hueneme, California and serves the Ventura County area. The station is owned by Gold Coast Broadcasting and broadcasts a Spanish-language news/ta ...

'' refers to

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

(

) speaking people who have migrated to northern

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

in relatively recent times, with no connection to the ''Cwenas/Kænir'' mentioned in the sagas.

Norwegian background

All ancient references to Kvenland and Kvens seem to be from Old English and Icelandic sources (9th to 13th centuries). Furthermore, most of them seem to have been connected to a certain geographical area in

in one way or another: * Ottar, the source used by King Alfred of Wessex, was from Hålogaland * Orkneyinga saga described how Nór travelled from Kvenland to Trondheim * Egil's saga described how Thorolf travelled from Namdalen (north of Trondheim) to Kvenland * Writer of the publication mentioning Terra Feminarum was especially familiar with Trondheim and also mentioned Hålogaland * Kvens were mentioned 1271 to have pillaged Hålogaland This might indicate that the term ''Kven'' was originally used in Norwegian dialects around a rather compact area ranging from

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; sma, Tråante), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2020, it had a population of 205,332, was the third most populous municipality in Norway, and ...

Hålogaland Hålogaland was the northernmost of the Norwegian provinces in the medieval Norse sagas. In the early Viking Age, before Harald Fairhair, Hålogaland was a kingdom extending between the Namdalen valley in Trøndelag county and the Lyngen fjord ...

Etymology

The widely accepted view, first presented by Jouko Vahtola, is that ''kven'' etymologically originates from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

''hvein'', meaning "swampy land." Nevertheless, ''kven'' is a root which in some cases translates to "woman" in Old Norse.

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...

*''kwinōn'', *''kunōn''; *''kwēni-z'', *''kwēnō'' "woman" developed into various Old Norse forms: ''kona''; ''kvǟn'', ''kvān'', ''kvɔ̄n''; ''kvendi''; ''kvenna'', ''kvinna''. A reference to ''

Terra Feminarum Terra feminarum ("''Women's Land''") is a name for an area in Medieval Northern Europe that appears in ''Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum'' (Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church) by Adam of Bremen 1075 AD. ''Terra Feminarum'' in ''Gesta ...

'' ("Woman Land") in a Latin text dated to 1075 CE is likely a translation of ''Kvenland''. A 14th-century Icelandic manuscript describes a ("Woman Land") north of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

populated by

hermaphroditic In reproductive biology, a hermaphrodite () is an organism that has both kinds of reproductive organs and can produce both gametes associated with male and female sexes. Many taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrates) do not have s ...

women. Alternatively, ''kven'' may be linked to Kainuu, a region of Eastern Finland whose etymology is also disputed. Similar sounding words to "kainuu" also exist in the Sami languages. In

Northern Sami Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ...

, ''Gáidnu'' is a rope made of roots for boats or fishing nets. ''Gáidnulaŝ'' refers to a clumsy person and ''Geaidnu'' stands for a road or a way. In the early Sami dictionaries ''Kainolats/Kainahaljo'' had the meaning Norwegian or Swedish man while ''Kainahalja'' had the meaning Norwegian or Swedish women, it could also have the meaning peasant. Helsing village, close to Torneå, was referred to as ''Cainho''.Lexicon lapponicum, Erik Lindahl, Johann Öhrling, Typis Joh. Georg. Lange, 1780"

References

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