Sitones

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Map showing the Roman empire in AD 125 and contemporary barbarian Europe, showing two possible locations of the Sitones. One, based on Tacitus, places the Sitones in central Sweden, which probably implies a Germanic ethno-linguistic affiliation. Another view places them roughly in modern Estonia and/or Finland and suggests that they were a Finno-Ugric people

Sitones were a people living somewhere in Northern Europe in the 1st century CE. They are only mentioned by Cornelius Tacitus in 97 CE in Germania. Tacitus considered them a Germanic people similar to Suiones (ancestors of modern Swedes):

"Upon the Suiones, border the people Sitones; and, agreeing with them in all other things, differ from them in one, that here the sovereignty is exercised by a woman. So notoriously do they degenerate not only from a state of liberty, but even below a state of bondage."^[1]

Speculations on Sitones' background are numerous. According to one theory, the name is a partial misunderstanding of Sigtuna, one of the central locations in the Swedish kingdom, that is known to have had a Latin spelling "Situne" much later.^[2] Related to this may be a memory of a period in which the Swedes were ruled by a certain queen as described in the Disas saga.^{[citation needed]}

Another speculative hypothesis is that the Sitones were living in Western Finland and were Germanic settlers or actually a Finnic group; sometimes they have been seen as the early inhabitants of ancient Kvenland.^[3]

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