But Mother Earth has carefully preserved most of what has been deposited in her bosom, and has repaid diligent research with trustworthy and irrefutable accounts of the age and various degrees of civilization of the race which inhabited Sweden in prehistoric times. Thus it has been proved that Sweden, like most other countries, has had a Stone Age, a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age. But there is absolutely no evidence to prove the now antiquated theories of various immigrations into Sweden by different races on different stages of civilization. On the contrary, the graves from the remotest times, through all successive periods, prove by the form of the skulls of those buried in them that Sweden has, through all ages, been inhabited by the same dolichocephalic, or long-headed, race which constitutes the overwhelming majority of her people to-day.
Sweden, physically considered, is not of as high antiquity as some countries of Europe. Yet it has been inhabited during the last four thousand years, at least. In the quaternary period the Scandinavian peninsula was a centre of a glacial movement which spread its disastrous influences over Western Russia, Northern Germany and Holland. In that period no vegetable or animal life was possible in Sweden. From the fact that the earliest stone celts found in Sweden and Denmark are not polished, archæologists were led to suppose that the Stone Age of the North was contemporaneous with the Palæolithic civilization in Western Europe. But this standpoint has been found untenable, because it has later become evident that the fauna surrounding the earliest inhabitants of the Northern countries was ours and not a quaternary one.
The 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.