Sitones were a people living somewhere in Northern Europe in the 1st century CE. They are only mentioned by Cornelius Tacitus in 97 CE in Germania. Tacitus considers them as a Germanic people similar to Swedes: This article is about the historian Tacitus. ... Map of the Roman Empire and Germania Magna in the early 2nd century, with the location of some Germanic tribes as described by Tacitus. ... The term Germanic peoples may refer to: the Germanic tribes that in the first millennium were seen as a barbarian threat by the Roman Empire and its successors; the Germanic Christianity that in the second millennium came to dominate much of Northern Europe, politically organized in the Holy Roman Empire...
"Upon the Suiones, border the people Sitones; and, agreeing with them in all other things, differ from them in one, that here the sovereignty is exercised by a woman. So notoriously do they degenerate not only from a state of liberty, but even below a state of bondage."[1]
Speculations on Sitones' background are numerous. According to one theory, the name is a partial misunderstanding of Sigtuna, one of the central locations in the Swedish kingdom, that is known to have had a Latin spelling "Situne" much later.[2] Related to this may be a memory of a period in which the Swedes were ruled by a certain queen as described in the Disas saga.[citation needed] Fornsigtuna (forn means ancient), Old Sigtun, Sithun, Sign(h)ildsberg or Signesberg is located in the parish of Håtuna ca 4 km west of the modern town of Sigtuna, by lake Mälaren, in Sweden. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Illustration from Johannes Messeniuss play Disa Disa is the heroine of a Swedish legendary saga, which was documented by Olaus Magnus, in 1555. ...
Another speculative hypothesis is that the Sitones were living in Western Finland and were Germanic settlers or actually a Finnic group; sometimes they have been seen as the early inhabitants of ancient Kvenland.[3] Finnic peoples (Fennic, sometimes Baltic-Finnic) refers to a group of related ethnic groups and nations speaking Finnic languages (also known as Balto-Finnic languages). ... Origin of the name Kven is not clear. ... Kvenland (a. ...
^ Kyösti Julku has stated in his publication Kvenland - Kainuunmaa (1986) that "there is no indistinctness whatsoever about the geographical location of Sitones" (page 51) and places them to Finland as Kven ancestors.
Here the confines of Suebia end." The name Sitones does not occur elsewhere, and it would be vain to seek it in the domain of reality.
The Sitones, who were governed by a queen, belonged to the Teutonic mythology, like the Hellusians and Oxionians, mentioned elsewhere in Germania.
It is not impossible that the name Sitones, of which the stem is sit, is connected with the Norse mythological name of the chief citadel in their country - setur (Geirvaðils setur, Iðja setur; cp.
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