Suiones

Suiones, Swedes, Sv?ar or Svear, were an ancient Germanic tribe in Scandinavia. They are usually only referred to as Swedes in English. According to early sources, they were a powerful tribe whose kings claimed descendance from the god Freyr. During the Viking Age they constituted the basis of the Varangian subset, the Vikings that travelled eastwards (see Rus').

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As the dominions of the Swedish kings grew, the name was applied also to include the Geats during the Middle Ages, but later it returned to referring only the people inhabiting the original tribal lands in Svealand, in opposition to the Geats.

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In modern Scandinavian, the adjectival form svensk and its plural svenskar/svensker have replaced the name svear and is, today, used to denote all the citizens of Sweden in opposition to ancient tribal Swedes, the svear.

Germanic tribe: REDIRECT Germanic peoples...

Scandinavia: Scandinavia is the cultural and historic region of the Scandinavian Peninsula and some surrounding areas. The Scandinavian countries are in present day understood as Norway, Sweden and Denmark, even if the latter actually does not reside on the Scandinavian Peninsula. These countries have mutually r...

Swedes: :7,500,000 (2009 est.)Other significant population centers:...