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ALBANIANS, see ILLYRIANS. TOP Ý

BOHEMIANS, or Czechs, are identified as Slavs, speaking a Slavic language which, along with Slovak, Polish, and the High and Low Sorbian, belongs to the western group of Slavic languages. Presently, there is also a claim to a Celtic heritage, in that Bohemia may be a name deriving from the Boii, a tribe from Celtic Gaul that lived in the region from about 600 to 25 BC when according to archeologists, Celts ceased to be the dominant culture in Bohemia.

After the Dacians dealt a crushing defeat in the region, the Celts who stayed on in Bohemia assimilated into the prevailing Germanic culture. This new inter-mixed society remained dominant in the area until the arrival of the Slavs in the 5^th and 6^th centuries. Today, the Czechs realise they are not pure-race Celts but a mix of many different ethnicities, the Slavic predominating at the roots of their race but with Celtic and Germanic genes also present. TOP Ý

CZECHS, a common word grouping together BOHEMIANS and MORAVIANS now living in Czechia, the western component of former Czechoslovakia, for a time also known as the Czech Republic. TOP Ý

FINNS belong to the Finno-Ugric group of peoples and languages belonging to the wider Finno-Tataric division. It includes the inhabitants of Finland, similar peoples in Russia and the Magyars (Hungarians), Ostiaks, Voguls and other related peoples of Ugric stock. They derive their name from the Yura (Ugra) country on either side of the Ural Mountains.

Finns are characteristically silent and stoic and never dare combust from repressed emotions. As a result, the people suffer from some of the world’s highest rates of suicide, depression and alcoholism. Displays of emotion are rare, if ever, and anger is a taboo. Self-control is very important as anger shows a person cannot cope. Anyone who is very temperamental and alive, expressing emotions like anger and happiness, is seen as infantile.

Among Nordic peoples, the Finns’ stolid nature stands apart. Their psychological make-up is not to get angry, no matter how much you are provoked. People assume that an angry person is a guilty person and that a normal person behaves in a way that no emotion was shown. Calmness and politeness are the hallmark of a Finn.

Suppressing anger was only one piece of a Finn’s cultural code. Most people eat dinner together in silence: silence is a sign of wisdom and good manners, not boredom. Such taciturnity and reservedness motivate the Finns that it is wise to be silent. Full of modesty, Finns cannot self-promote, feeling shame to do so and are in a constant self-esteem crisis.

Theirs is a consensus driven, homogeneous culture and a free exchange of ideas sometimes proves difficult. It is perceived much could be solved if Finns can say what they think and express their emotions. In always being the last to laugh, theirs is a Nordic European version of the Japanese character. TOP Ý

ILLYRIANS were Indo-European tribesmen who have probably evolved from the Stone Age and appeared in the territory of Albania towards the beginning of the Bronze Age. They were a conglomeration of many tribes that inhabited the western Balkans, from present Slovenia to Epirus halfway down the mainland of modern Greece. Generally, the Illyrians in the highlands were more isolated than those in the lowlands and their culture evolved more slowly. This phenomenon has persisted throughout the history of Albania.

The Illyrians inhabited much of the area for at least the next millennium. Archaeologists associate them with the Hallstatt culture, an Iron Age people noted for the production of iron and bronze swords with winged-shaped handles and for the domestication of horses. They occupied lands extending from the Danube, Sava, and Morava rivers to the Adriatic Sea and the Sar Mountains. At various times, groups of Illyrians migrated over land and sea into Italy.

Ancient authors relate that the Illyrians were a sociable and hospitable people, renowned for their daring and bravery at war. Illyrian women were fairly equal in status to men, some even becoming heads of tribal federations. In matters of religion, Illyrians were pagans who believed in an afterlife and buried their dead along with arms and various articles intended for personal use. The land was rich in minerals and the Illyrians became skillful in the mining and processing of metals. Chrome is still mined abundantly, today. They were highly skilled boat builders and sailors, manning their light, swift galleys known as liburnae.

The Illyrians, who lived in the southern Balkans long before the Greeks, Romanians, and Slavs migrated to the region, are the most likely ascendants of the Albanians. During the 7th and 6th centuries BC, the Greeks established several colonies along the Albanian coast, including Epidamnus (Durres) and Appollonia (near Vlore). By the 3^rd century BC, the colonies began to decline and eventually disappeared. As the Greeks left, the small Illyrian groups that pre-dated them evolved into more complex political units, including federations and kingdoms, the most important of which flourished between the 5th and 2nd centuries BC.

In its beginning, the kingdom of Illyria comprised the actual territories of Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, with a large part of Serbia. Shkoder was its capital, just as it is now, the most important center of northern Albania. The Kingdom, however, reached its zenith in the 4th century B.C. when the prominent king Bardhylus united under his scepter the kingdoms of Illyria, Molossia (Epirus) and a good part of Macedonia. But its decay began under the same ruler as a result of the attacks made on it by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.

In 232 BC, the Illyrian throne was occupied by Teuta, the celebrated Queen of Illyria. The depredations of her thriving navy on the rising commercial development of the Roman Republic forced the Roman Senate to declare war against the Queen. A huge army and navy attacked central Albania, and, after two years of protracted warfare, Teuta was induced to seek peace in 227 BC. The last king of Illyria was Gentius who in 165 BC was defeated by the Romans and taken to Rome as a captive. Since then Illyria became a Roman dependency. The territory was carved out into three independent republics, the capitals of which were respectively Shkoder, Epidamnus (Durres) and Dulcigno (now Ulqin in Montenegro).

From the 8th through the 11th century AD, Illyria gradually became known as Albania, from the Albanos group that inhabited the territory. In the 9th century the Byzantine Empire's power began to weaken as Bulgarian Slavs, Norman Crusaders, Italian Angevins, Serbs, and Venetians, invaded the region. After the 10th century a feudal system developed in which peasant soldiers who had served military lords became serfs on landed estates. At this time, some of the regions provinces became virtually independent of Constantinople. In the 16th century the name Shquipetar, or Country of the Eagle, replaced Albania.

Since ancient times, the Albanians became divided into two distinct tribal and dialectal groupings, the Ghegs and Tosks. In the rugged northern mountains, Gheg shepherds lived in a tribal society often completely independent of Ottoman rule. In the south, peasant Muslim and Orthodox Tosks worked the land for Muslim beys and provincial rulers who frequently revolted against the sultan's authority. It was owing to the protection afforded by the mountains, a close-knit tribal society, and stubborness that the Albanians people developed their distinctive language and identity. TOP Ý

LAPPS have an uncertain origin. They may either be the descendants of one of the original Finnic tribes in the Baltic region or the descendants of immigrant Siberian tribes. There is evidence of their presence north of the Gulf of Finland long before any of the other present-day Baltic peoples. The Lapps’ own name for themselves is Sami. They are one of Europe’s smallest original people with a broad head, dark hair and skin, small faces and blue eyes. Though being stocky and of short stature, the Lapps are strong and agile. They live as citizens of the country in which they maintain permanent villages, but the whole region is called Lapland (Finnish, Lapi or Lappi; Swedish, Lappland) and it stretches across Arctic Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia and is bounded by the Norwegian Sea and the Arctic Ocean. To the west in Norway (pop. 30,000), Lapland has high mountains that are deeply eroded into fjords and headlands. Then Lapland slopes downward from Sweden’s highest peaks to the east where in Finland (pop. 195,000) and Russia it becomes low-lying and marshy tundra. The whole of Lapland is windy, but sheltered swamplands and river valleys sustain natural meadowland and game birds are abundant and waterways well-stocked with fish. The Sami of Lapland are seminomadic and take their herds of reindeer to the mountains in the summer and to the lowland woods in winter. They rove about the tundra with their grazing herds of reindeer which supply milk, meat, and skins for clothing and tents. TOP Ý

LITHUANIANS inhabit a flat country which was constantly subjected to raids and clashes between barbarian hordes and armies. The land, invariably said to be inhabited by ‘European redskins’, was also subjected to the mingling, against a robust pagan background, of different religions and languages: Catholics speaking the ancient Lithuanian tongue (here see) and Polish, Protestants giving orders in German, Orthodox expressing themselves in Russian, Uniates worshipping in Ukrainian, Jews who turned Vilnius into Jerusalem of the Baltic, praying and trading in Yiddish. The torture inflicted by modern and contemporary history on this Baltic people (the Nazi holocaust eliminated some 200,000 Jews) is redeemed by the enigmas, mysteries and extraordinary vicissitudes of their ancient history. Mystery was part of the genetic formation of their pagan and pre-Christian identity. The Lithuanians were the last people to be converted to Christianity, but even so they remained profoundly and tribally mysterious, even to themselves. Inveterate animists as they were, they worshipped plants and minerals (amber), bears and menacing voracious gods. No one is able to say who those primitive Baltic tribes, who worshipped the oak and hid in the virgin forest, were or where they came from. In Plato’s time the only sign of their existence was a rare, precious element of barter. It was a transparent cube of amber with a petrified insect in the middle, slowly carried by tribe after tribe, like a totemic object of exchange, travelling along the Dnepr and the Black Sea to the towns and colonies of the Greek archipelago. TOP Ý

MORAVIANS claim to be Czech by language but Moravian by birth. There are 1.3 million Moravians who consider themselves to belong to a separate nation from the Bohemians notwithstanding their having a common language. It is claimed that the Kingdom of Wallachian, Great Moravia and other aristocratic states all developed in the region rather than in neighbouring Bohemia.

Slavic tribes and Moravian warrior societies settled from northern Persia in the Moravian and Danube river basins in the 7^th century BC. A princely dynasty was formed by their chieftains in the 9^th century that organized the first state in central Europe, Velka Morava, or Great Moravia. It was there that at the invitation of Prince Rostislav, the missionaries Cyril and Methodius from Byzantium in 863 preached the faith to the Slavs and developed the Cyrillic alphabet. A new language and Slavic liturgy were created by them in the land.

Following a period of decline caused by Hungarian tribes who broke up Moravian power, Moravia was annexed by Bohemian princes in 1025, but a diarchy of Moravia and Bohemia arose in the 12^th century which took several forms until 20^th century. Earlier, in 1642, Brno was established as the capital of Moravia and from 1918 Moravia has been considered as one of the major constitutive elements of ensuing Czech republics together with Bohemia and Silesia, with which region Moravia merged in 1927 to form a self-administered unit. TOP Ý