Sweden

by Victor Alfred Nilsson

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 are the rock-carvings from this period. The Swedes of the Bronze Age understood, by a kind of picture-writing, how to preserve the memory of important events, although an alphabet of any kind was unknown. The rock-carvings have been found abundantly in Bohuslæn (formerly a part of West Gothland) and East Gothland, but also occur in Scania and other parts of Sweden. At the time of the arrival of Cortez in Mexico the Aztecs were exactly on the same standpoint. In spite of their high civilization, they were in the Bronze Age and possessed a picture-writing, but were not acquainted with an alphabet. In Sweden, as in Mexico, there certainly once existed an oral tradition necessary for its interpretation, which, now lost, leaves little hope for their present or future explanation. Yet they throw considerable light on Swedish civilization during this remote period. Thus they show that horses were already used for riding and driving. Cattle are represented. In pairs these are harnessed to a plow, which is being driven by a man. Boats are depicted, generally very large ones, without masts, but with thirty pairs of oars or more. They are usually unlike at the two ends, sometimes adorned with an animal’s head in the high and narrow stem, sometimes with a similar decoration also in the stern.

The rock-carvings tell us nothing of the dwellings or the dress of the Swedes in the Bronze Age. All the instruments and tools necessary for the construction of wooden houses existed and appear to have been in use. The material was ever abundantly supplied by the Swedish forests, but it was not strong enough to withstand the influence of time. All the more surprising it is that articles of dress from such a remote period as the Earlier Bronze Age, 1000 B.C., should have been preserved to our time. Still such is the case, thanks to a combination of exceptionally favorable circumstances. These garments are of wool of a very simple substance; some have been worn by men, others by women. The man’s dress consisted of an unbrimmed cap of thick woven wool, a wide circular mantle, a kind of tunic, kept together with a woollen belt, and some narrow strips of wool which probably covered the legs. In a man’s grave was found a shawl of wool with fringes. The woman’s dress consisted then, as it does now, chiefly of two garments, a jacket with sleeves and a long robe, the latter held together with a belt of wool, ending in ornamental tassels. Large mantles, of mixed wool and cow hair, were used as wraps. The women wore splendid bronze ornaments, such as finger-rings, bracelets, torques and brooches. From the finds it becomes apparent that many women in those days carried weapons, a dagger often being found at the side of the body.