[Footnote A:  Perhaps in this, and similar tales, we may recognize something of real history.  That the Fins, or ancient natives of Scandinavia, were driven into the mountains, by the invasion of Odin and his Asiatics, is sufficiently probable; and there is reason to believe, that the aboriginal inhabitants understood, better than the intruders, how to manufacture the produce of their own mines.  It is therefore possible, that, in process of time, the oppressed Fins may have been transformed into the supernatural duergar.  A similar transformation has taken place among the vulgar in Scotland, regarding the Picts, or Pechs, to whom they ascribe various supernatural attributes.]

Similar to the traditions of the Icelanders, are those current among the Laplanders of Finland, concerning a subterranean people, gifted with’ supernatural qualities, and inhabiting the recesses of the earth.  Resembling men in their general appearance, the manner of their existence, and their habits of life, they far excel the miserable Laplanders in perfection of nature, felicity of situation, and skill in mechanical arts.  From all these advantages, however, after the partial conversion of the Laplanders, the subterranean people have derived no farther credit, than to be confounded with the devils and magicians of the dark ages of Christianity; a degradation which, as will shortly be demonstrated, has been also suffered by the harmless Fairies of Albion, and indeed by the whole host of deities of learned Greece and mighty Rome.  The ancient opinions are yet so firmly rooted, that the Laps of Finland, at this day, boast of an intercourse with these beings, in banquets, dances, and magical ceremonies, and even in the more intimate commerce of gallantry.  They talk, with triumph, of the feasts which they have shared in the elfin caverns, where wine and tobacco, the productions of the Fairy region, went round in abundance, and whence the mortal guest, after receiving the kindest treatment and the most salutary counsel, has been conducted to his tent by an escort of his supernatural entertainers.—­Jessens, de Lapponibus.

The superstitions of the islands of Feroe, concerning their Froddenskemen, or under-ground people, are derived from the duergar of Scandinavia.  These beings are supposed to inhabit the interior recesses of mountains, which they enter by invisible passages.  Like the Fairies, they are supposed to steal human beings.  “It happened,” says Debes, p. 354, “a good while since, when the burghers of Bergen had the commerce of Feroe, that there was a man in Servaade, called Jonas Soideman, who was kept by spirits in a mountain, during the space of seven years, and at length came out; but lived afterwards in great distress and fear, lest they should again take him away; wherefore people were obliged to watch him in the night.”  The same author mentions another young man, who had been carried away, and, after his return, was removed a second time upon