A dwarf king named
Fin is also remembered in Frisian tradition;[38] and that he and his
race were small men is pretty clearly proved by the fact that when one
of the earth-houses attributed to him was opened some years ago, it was
found to contain the bones of a little man.[39] Both of these dwarf
Fins, Little Fin of Norway and Little Fin of Denmark, are undoubtedly
real; and there seems no good reason to suppose that the dwarf Fin of
Hebridean tradition was not equally real. Whether they were three
separate people is a problem. "Fin" appears to have been at one time a
not uncommon name, whatever its etymology and that of "Fian" may be. At
any rate, there is nothing in history (which speaks of a close
intercourse between Scandinavia and the British Isles, in former times),
and nothing in the ethnology of North-Western Europe, to make us regard
as mythical the capture and enthralment of any one of these three
"little Fins." If Fin of the Fians, therefore, was a typical Fian, they
were little people.[40]
In regarding the Fians as a race of dwarfs, I do not overlook the fact
that they are also spoken of as "giants." But to assume them to have
been of gigantic stature is both totally at variance with the bulk of
the evidence regarding them, and at variance with the fact that the word
"giant" has very frequently been used to denote a savage, or a
cave-dweller.
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