Prehistoric Sweden

Ice age

The pre-history of Sweden begins at the end of the Pleistocene epoch at the beginning of Holocene epoch, following the last ice age, the Weichsel glaciation. Parts of Denmark, Scania and the Norwegian coast line were free from ice around 11000 BC, and around 8000 BC the rim of ice was around Dalsland, Vastergotland and Ostergotland. Not until 6000 BC all of Svealand and the coasts of Norrland were free of ice. In Scandinavia, the time following the ice age begins at circa 9500 BC and is called the Ancylus age, after Ancylus fluviatilis, a small mollusc from this time. At this time, Denmark and Sweden were joined and the "Baltic Sea" was a fresh water lake called the Ancylus Lake. The Ancylus age is followed by the Litorina age (named after the Litorina litorea mollusc) at around 7500 BC, with the forming of the Litorina Sea.

With the first human colonization of this new land (which was largely under water, and with radically different coastlines) during the Ancylus and Litorina ages begins the Nordic Stone Age.

Stone age

Upper Paleolithic

As the ice receded reindeer grazed on the plains of Denmark and southernmost Sweden. This was the land of the Ahrensburg culture, tribes who hunted over territories 100 000 km? vast and lived in teepees on the tundra. On this land there was little forest but arctic white birch and rowan, but the taiga slowly appeared.

Mesolithic

In the 7th millennium BC, when the reindeer and their hunters had moved for northern Scandinavia, forests had been established in the land. A culture called the Maglemosian culture lived in Denmark and southern Sweden, and north of them, in Norway and most of southern Sweden, the Fosna-Hensbacka culture, who lived mostly along the shores of the thriving forests. Utilizing fire, boats and stone tools enabled these Stone Age inhabitants to survive life in northern Europe. The northern hunter/gatherers followed the herds and the salmon runs, moving south during the winters, moving north again during the summers. These early peoples followed cultural traditions similar to those practised throughout other regions in the far north – areas including modern Finland, Russia, and across the Bering Strait into the northernmost strip of North America (containing portions of today's Alaska and Canada).

During the 6th millennium BC, southern Scandinavia was clad in lush forests of temperate broadleaf and mixed forests. In these forests roamed animals such as aurochs, wisent, moose and red deer. Now, tribes that we call the Kongemose culture lived of these animals. Like their predecessors, they also hunted seals and fished in the rich waters. North of the Kongemose people, lived other hunter-gatherers in most of southern Norway and Sweden, called the Nostvet and Lihult cultures, descendants of the Fosna and Hensbacka cultures. These cultures still hunted, in the end of the 6th millennium BC when the Kongemose culture was replaced by the Ertebolle culture in the south.

Neolithic

During the 5th millennium BC, the Ertebolle people learnt pottery from neighbouring tribes in the south, who had begun to cultivate the land and keep animals. Soon, they too started to cultivate the land and, ca 4000 BC, they became part of the megalithic Funnelbeaker culture. During the 4th millennium BC, these Funnelbeaker tribes expanded into Sweden up to Uppland. The Nostvet and Lihult tribes learnt new technology from the advancing farmers, but not agriculture, and became the Pitted Ware cultures, towards the end of the 4th millennium BC. These Pitted Ware tribes halted the advance of the farmers and pushed them south into south-western Sweden, but some say that the farmers were not killed or chased away, but that they voluntarily joined the Pitted Ware culture and became part of them. At least one settlement appears to be mixed, the Alvastra pile-dwelling.

It is not known what language these early Scandinavians spoke, but towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, they were overrun by new tribes who many scholars think spoke Proto-Indo-European, the Battle-Axe culture. This new people advanced up to Uppland and the Oslofjord, and they probably provided the language that was the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages. These new tribes were individualistic and clearly patriarchal with the battle axe as a status symbol. They were cattle herders and with them most of southern Scandinavia entered the neolithic. However, soon a new invention would arrive, that would usher in a time of cultural advance in Scandinavia, the Bronze Age.

Bronze age

During the Nordic Bronze Age, an advanced civilization manufacturing bronze weapons and bronze and gold jewelry appears in Denmark, Sweden and parts of Norway. It has been assumed that this civilization was founded in amber trade, through contacts with Central European and Mediterranean cultures.

The period 2300-500 BC was the most intensive petroglyph carving period, consisting of carvings of an agricultural nature and depicting warfare, ships, domesticated animals, etc. There has also been found petroglyphs with themes of sexual nature in Bohuslan; these are dated from 800-500 BC.

Iron age

    See also the separate articles on the Pre-Roman Iron Age, the Vendel Age, and the Roman Iron Age

Tacitus (about 98 AD) described a nation called "Suiones" living on an island in Sea. These Suiones had ships that were peculiar because they had a prow in both ends (the shape we recognise as Viking ships). This word Suiones is the same name as Anglo-Saxon Sweon whose country was called Sweoland (Svealand). In Beowulf, this tribe is also called Sweo?eod, from which the name Sweden is derived, and the country has the name Sweorice which is an old Anglo-Saxon form of the present Swedish name for Sweden (which some claim is Danish, and has its origin from the Kalmar Union). (Danish Sverige = Swedish Svearike).

In the 6th century the Ostrogoth Jordanes mentioned a tribe named Suehans which is the same name as Tacitus' Suiones. He also unwittingly described the same tribe by a different name, the Suetidi which is the same as an old name for Sweden, Svi?jo? and the English Sweo?eod.

Several independent sources, such as Beowulf, Ynglingatal, Ynglinga saga, Saxo Grammaticus and Historia Norwegiae, mention a number of Swedish kings who lived in the 6th century, such as Eadgils, Ohthere and Onela, as well as a number of Geatish kings. Some of these kings were in all likelihood historic kings within the present territory of Sweden, although the sources sometimes give contradictory information, such as the death of Ottar. See Mythological kings of Sweden and Semi-legendary kings of Sweden.

In those days the kings were warlords rather than kings as we understand that title today, and what was to become Sweden, Norway and Denmark in a modern sense, were a number of petty kingdoms whose borders changed constantly as the kings killed each other. The politics of these early kingdoms are retold in Beowulf and the Norse sagas.

One of the most powerful petty kings was the Swedish king, the king of the Sweon (Old Norse Sviar), who ruled Sweorici (Old Norse Sviariki). It is unknown when it happened and it probably happened several times, but when sources become more reliabe the territories of the Swedish kings include Vastergotland and other parts of Gotaland. This stage is by some considered to be the beginning of Sweden, as we know it today.

Early Swedish history

Early Swedish history covers the time following the pre-historic era and partly the Viking Age, and spans from circa 800 AD, when the process of Christianization began, up to 1523, when the king Gustav Vasa was crowned. The era in a way corresponds to the European Middle Ages.

During this period, the four lands of Sweden were gradually consolidated. Scandinavia was fully Christianized around 1100 AD. The Kalmar Union between the Scandinavian countries was established in 1389 and lasted until Gustav Vasa broke off at seizing power.

9th century

During the 9th century extensive Scandinavian settlements were made on the east side of the Baltic sea. During the reign of Louis I of France (Louis the Pious) in the first half of the 9th century, we hear of Varangians arriving in Constantinople and of piratical expeditions on the Black Sea and on the Caspian Sea. Expeditions such as the possibly legendary ones by Rurik (Rorik) and Askold (Haskuld) established settlements that resulted in Kievan Rus'. Proofs of extensive Scandinavian settlements in Russia are not only to be found in exensive archaeological remains, but also to be found partly in the names assigned to the Dnieper rapids by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, partly in references to this people made by foreign representatives at the court of the Byzantine Empire. The fact that many of the names which occur in Russian chronicles seem to be peculiarly Swedish suggests that Sweden was the home of the settlers. . A minority view disputes the Swedish origins of at least part of the early Rus, hypothesizing that the princes invited by the population of Ladoga stemmed from the royal house of Haithabu. This town also has a dynastic connection with Sweden, since Sweyn Estridson related to Adam of Bremen that it was conquered by a Swedish warlord named Olof the Brash, who founded the House of Olaf which ruled Denmark in the late 9th and the early 10th centuries.