Editing Swedes (tribe) (section)

===Romans===
[[File:Roman Empire 125.svg|thumb|right|300px|The Roman empire under [[Hadrian]] (ruled 117–38), showing the location of the '''Suiones''' Germanic tribe, inhabiting central Sweden]]
[[File:Gaius Cornelius Tacitus.jpg|thumb|Gaius Cornelius Tacitus]]
There are two sources from the 1st century A.D that are quoted as referring to the Suiones. The first one is [[Pliny the Elder]] who said that the Romans had rounded the ''Cimbric peninsula'' ([[Jutland]]) where there was the ''Codanian Gulf'' ([[Kattegat]]?). In this gulf there were several large islands among which the most famous was ''Scatinavia'' ([[Scandinavia]]). He said that the size of the island was unknown but in a part of it dwelt a tribe named the ''[[Hilleviones|Hillevionum gente]]'' ([[Nominative case|Nominative]]: ''Hillevionum gens''), in 500 villages, and they considered their country to be a world of its own.

What strikes the commentators of this text is that this large tribe is unknown to posterity, unless it was a simple misspelling or misreading of ''Illa'' '''S'''''vionum gente''. This would make sense, since a large Scandinavian tribe named the ''Suiones'' was known to the Romans.<ref>{{Cite book|title = Encyclopedia of European Peoples|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=kfv6HKXErqAC&pg=PA786|publisher = Infobase Publishing|date = 1 January 2006|isbn = 9781438129181|language = en|first1 = Carl|last1 = Waldman|first2 = Catherine|last2 = Mason|access-date = 16 January 2016|archive-date = 20 April 2023|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230420104602/https://books.google.com/books?id=kfv6HKXErqAC&pg=PA786|url-status = live}}</ref>

Tacitus wrote in AD 98 in [[s:Germania#XLIV|Germania 44, 45]] that the Suiones were a powerful tribe (''distinguished not merely for their arms and men, but for their powerful fleets'') with ships that had a [[prow]] in both ends). He further mentions that the Suiones were much impressed by wealth, and the king's thus was absolute. Further, the Suiones did not normally bear arms, and that the weapons were guarded by a slave.

After Tacitus' mention of the Suiones, the sources are silent about them until the 6th century as Scandinavia still was in pre-historic times. Some historians have maintained that it is not possible to claim that a continuous Swedish [[ethnicity]] reaches back to the Suiones of Tacitus.<ref>Dick Harrison: ''Sveriges historia – Medeltiden'' (2002); Fredrik Svanberg: ''Decolonizing the Viking Age'' (2003).</ref> According to this view the referent of an ethnonym and the ethnic discourse have varied considerably during different phases of history.