—viz., the aspiration of the letters l and w. By this they bear witness in their tongue to the present day of their descent, for these peculiarities are an infallible characteristic of the Mœso-Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Icelandic languages.[1] The Anglo-Saxon people must have derived this peculiarity from a Northern source, for Bosworth tells us that the Danes and Germans cannot pronounce these aspirated letters.
The history of the Goths and Swedes in the Scandinavian peninsula shows that the latter became the predominant race in the ninth century, and subsequently the two nations were gradually blended into one. During the period when England received so many settlers from the North, we must look for traces of Goths and Swedes under their own tribal or national names. One of these was the tribe known as the Helsingi, whose homeland was the east coast of the Baltic, opposite to Finland, and, as the name Helsingfors shows, must have been connected with the Fins. They were also known as the Heslengi,[2] and under the name Helsings are mentioned in the ‘Traveller’s Tale’ in connection with Wade and his boat, a mythical hero, like Weland the Smith. As a Northern nation their name must have been familiar to the Old English. One of the peculiarities of the old dialect of the Gothic people of Dalecarlia that has survived is the transposition of syllables, as jasel for selja, and lata for tala.[3] The transposition of consonant sounds, as in Helsingi and Heslengi, is well known. The survival of the name of this ancient tribe in those of Helsingborg on the west coast of Sweden, Helsingfors on the coast of Finland, and Helsinore, or Elsinore, on the coast of Zealand, points to the probability of their having been a maritime people, and as such likely to have taken part in maritime expeditions. In England such names
