Sweden. Victor Alfred Nilsson
oldest types of finds of the Stone Age in the North have been discovered in the refuse-heaps on the Danish coast. These refuse-heaps, consisting of stone implements, shells, bones, etc., do not occur in Sweden, but the implements characteristic of them are found scattered over some parts of the southernmost Swedish province of Scania. The shape of these earliest finds is exactly the same as of those of the later Stone Age, the only difference being that the former are not polished. But there are transitions between the classes, and the act of polishing must be regarded as an important phase of progress.
The Stone Age of Sweden is quite remarkable. If the remains of the earlier period are scanty, the finds from the later one are all the more numerous. With the exception of Denmark and a part of North Germany, there is no European country which can boast of such rich and beautiful relics from the later Stone Age as the southern part of Sweden. The finds in the other countries mentioned are almost exactly like those of Sweden from the Stone and the Bronze Ages, both as far as implements and skulls are concerned, proving them to have been settled by the same race.
The weapons and implements from the Stone Age consist of axes, daggers, spearheads, arrowheads, saws, and knives of flint; axes, gauges, handmills of stone; fishhooks and arrowheads of bone; earthenware, etc., etc. The graves of this period are dolmens, passage-graves, and stone cists, the last mentioned either uncovered or covered with a barrow. The different forms of burial places seem to indicate four successive stages of the period. Through their existence it becomes probable that the inhabitants of Sweden during the Stone Age had fixed dwelling places.
A dolmen is a grave-chamber of which the walls are formed of large, thick stones set up edgewise, covered with one huge block of stone as a roof, all the stones being rough outside and smooth inside. The passage-graves are built in the same way, but are larger and distinguished by a long covered passage leading to it. These graves are surrounded by a low barrow, upon the top of which the huge roof-stones were originally visible. Dolmens and passage-graves occur in Sweden in considerable numbers along the coast of Scania, on the plains of West Gothland and in Bohuslæn, more sparsely in other parts of West Gothland and in Halland, with stray cases of graves of a similar construction in Nerike and Western Sœdermanland. It is important to note the regions in which these graves have been found, for they must be identical with the parts of the earliest settlements. Such graves are also very common in Denmark, while only one has been found in Norway.
The stone cists resemble very much the chamber of a passage-grave. They are larger and four-sided, and built of somewhat thinner stones. Stone cists standing partly visible above the barrow constitute a form peculiar to Sweden, occurring in great numbers in West Gothland, Bohuslæn, Dalsland and Southwestern Vermland, while the covered stone cists appear in the same provinces and in Nerike, East Gothland, Smaland, Bleking and the Island of Gothland.
During the Stone Age the bodies were buried unburned, in a recumbent or sitting position. By the side of the dead body was usually placed a weapon, a tool, or some ornaments, sometimes also earthenware vessels, now filled only with earth. These vessels may once have contained food. The elaborate graves seem to indicate a belief in a future life. The food, if any such was placed by the side of the dead, would not necessarily point to the fact that such a future life was imagined merely as a continuation of earth life. The heathen Scandinavians of a later age believed that the dead remained for some time in their burial place before reaching their ultimate destination. For their possible wants during this intermediate state food was left with the dead body.
The total number of relics of stone found in Sweden is 64,000. Of these only 4,000 belong to Svealand and Norrland, while of all the rest found in Gothaland 45,000 belong to Scania alone.
In a much later age the Scandinavians were regarded as pure barbarians. For this reason it is important to observe that graves from the Stone Age show that the Swedes in that remote period had several domesticated animals, the dog, horse, ox, swine, sheep, and, perhaps, also the goat. Hence they were certainly a pastoral people, not living exclusively by hunting and fishing. But whether they practiced agriculture cannot be decided in the present state of our knowledge. The fact that the very oldest graves are found in the most fertile districts of Southern Sweden seems to speak in favor of the supposition that agriculture was known and appreciated.
Of metals, even of gold, the people of the late Stone Age were entirely ignorant, also of the art of writing. Hence no monuments of their language will ever be found. Still it is highly probable that the Teutonic ancestors of the Swedes began to settle in the land from the beginning of the Stone Age.
It is true that some skulls, very much like those of the Laps, have also been found in the graves of the Stone Age; but it must be borne in mind that these burial places, impressive through their size and the amount of work and mechanical skill necessary for their erection, can be believed to have been originally intended only for kings or chieftains, and their families. It was probably a custom, as in later heathen times, to bury with such distinguished people a number of slaves, dead or alive. The presence of skulls of a non-Scandinavian type can thus be explained, without the necessity of accepting the theory of an early mixture of two races.
In the northern part of Sweden have been found relics of stone, usually of slate, which do not appear to have belonged to the people of the dolmens or passage-graves. They bear a close resemblance to those found in Finland and in other countries inhabited by Laps, Finns and peoples related to them. This seems to prove that these so-called Arctic stone implements are relics of the Laps and belong to the time when this people was still ignorant of the use of metal. Judging from the number of relics found on the coast, from Westerbotten to Gestrikland, and in Dalecarlia, the Laps dwelt also in somewhat more southerly parts of Sweden than at the present day. So far south as in the middle provinces, no Arctic stone relics have been found, still less in any of the southern provinces. This seems to indicate that the Laps and the Swedes did not dwell in the same parts of the country during the Stone Age, and their intercourse, if any, must have been of a very accidental and casual nature.
That the Stone Age lasted a very long time in the North is proved by the fact that it reached a far higher development there than anywhere else in Europe. The best authorities think that it must have ended rather before than after 1500 B.C., or 3,500 years before our time.
The Bronze Age followed upon the Stone Age. Flint exists in Sweden and was easily found. There are also copper mines, but their working is of comparatively modern date. The copper of the Bronze Age must have been brought from abroad, and tin, necessary for the production of bronze, is foreign to Scandinavia. The knowledge of the working of any metal proves an immense progress. Yet there are strong grounds for the opinion that the beginning of the Bronze Age in Sweden was not connected with any great immigration of a new race, but that the inhabitants learned the art of working bronze by intercourse with other nations. The resemblance of the graves during the last part of the Stone Age and the early part of the Bronze Age points most strongly to such a conclusion. From Asia the knowledge of bronze, and the higher civilization dependent on it, had gradually spread itself over the continent of Europe, in a northerly and northwesterly direction, until it reached the coasts of the Baltic.
The Bronze Age of Sweden began about 1500 B.C., and lasted for a thousand years, or until the beginning of the fifth century before Christ. The period has been divided into an Earlier and a Later Bronze Age, a division which has been questioned as to its absolute correctness. The works from the former are decorated with fine spiral ornaments and zigzag lines. The graves generally contain remains of unburned bodies. The antiquities of the Earlier Bronze Age, almost without an exception, appear to be of native workmanship. They are distinguished by artistic forms and point to a highly developed taste in the working of bronze. They generally surpass in this respect the relics of the Bronze Age found in almost all other European countries. The works belonging to the Later Bronze Age are characterized by a very different taste and style of ornamentation, though even they are often the result of great skill. The spiral ornaments are no longer predominant, but the ends of rings, knife-handles, and the like, are often rolled up in spiral volutes.
During this period the dead were always burned. Buttons, sword-hilts, and other works of bronze were sometimes decorated with pieces of amber and resin inlaid. Objects are also often found overlaid with thin plates of gold.
Remarkable