page_title: Nordic Israelism
section_title: Early predecessors
hierarchical_section_title: Nordic Israelism / History / Early predecessors
caption_attribution_description: English: Henry Spelman (c.1564-1641) inscribed centre left: SIR HENRY SPELMAN oil on canvas 126.5 by 103.5 cm
context_page_description: Nordic Israelism or Norse Israelism is the belief that Scandinavian peoples, or the Nordic countries descend from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Nordic Israelism as a movement and ideology only emerged in the latter half of the 19th century among several early proponents of British Israelism.
context_section_description: A 15th-century Latin chronicle, "Chronicon Holsatiae vetus", found in Gottfried Leibniz's Accessiones historicae (1698),  states the Danes were of the Tribe of Dan, while the Jutes the Jews. Later the antiquarian Henry Spelman in 1620 had further claimed that the Danes were the Israelite Tribe of Dan, based on the apparent similarity in name. In the 18th century the Swedish historian Olof von Dalin believed that the ancient Finns (alongside Lapps and Estonians) who sprung from the Neuri descended ultimately from the lost tribes of Israel:
  ...the Neuri seem to be remnants of the Ten Tribes of Israel which Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, brought as captives out of Canaan... [When one realises that] the language of the ancient Finns, Lapps and Estonians is similar to the Hebrew and even that this people in ancient times reckoned their year's beginning from the first of March, and Saturday as their Sabbath, then one sees that the Neuri in all probability had this origin."
  John Eurenius (1688–1751), a Swedish pastor in Torsåker, Angermanland, Sweden, also connected the Israelites to the Nordic countries, in his Atlantica Orientalis (1751) he theorised that the Gods of Norse mythology were deified ancestors from the Levant, who he connected to Israel. Olof Rudbeck the Younger in the 18th century also attempted to prove that the Nordic languages sprung from Hebrew.
caption: Henry Spelman, who in 1620 connected the Danes to the Tribe of Dan
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Henry Spelman", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "26", "Image YResolution": "26", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.6.11", "Image DateTime": "2010:12:16 12:09:23", "Image Artist": "after Cornelius Johnson", "Image Copyright": "http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=159635853", "Image ExifOffset": "2408", "Image XPTitle": "[72, 0, 101, 0, 110, 0, 114, 0, 121, 0, 32, 0, 83, 0, 112, 0, 101, 0, 108, 0, 109, 0, 97, 0, 110, 0, 0, 0]", "Image XPComment": "[42, 0, 105, 0, 110, 0, 115, 0, 99, 0, 114, 0, 105, 0, 98, 0, 101, 0, 100, 0, ... ]", "Image XPAuthor": "after Cornelius Johnson", "Image XPSubject": "[80, 0, 111, 0, 114, 0, 116, 0, 114, 0, 97, 0, 105, 0, 116, 0, 0, 0]", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4868", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3855", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1058", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1295", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}