Besides swords and axes of beautiful workmanship, fishhooks, sickles and the different parts of harness have been found; also vessels of gold or bronze, evidently used for temple service. The Swedes of the Bronze Age were not acquainted with the art of forging the heated metal, but they possessed much technical skill in the art of casting. When the implement was taken out of the mold it was dipped in cold water, and very often the surface was ornamented by means of punches made of bronze. Their good taste was as highly developed as their skill. That the work was done in the North is proven by numerous finds of the very molds in which weapons and agricultural implements were cast. During the Stone Age only Gothaland and parts of Svealand were inhabited. The finds of the Bronze Age prove that the limits of the population were about the same during this period. The southern provinces continued to be the more thickly settled. Twenty times as many finds have been made in the soil of Scania as in the rest of the country. Norrland was hardly settled to any extent until the Iron Age, and has offered comparatively few finds from the Bronze Age, the total of which for the whole of Sweden amounts to about 4,000.
The Iron Age followed upon the Bronze Age. It lasts to this very day, we ourselves still living in the Iron Age; but the term is generally applied to that part of the period which commences with the close of the Bronze Age, and ends with the fall of heathendom. During the Iron Age, the Swedes first became acquainted with iron, silver, brass, lead, glass, stamped coins from foreign lands, and learned how to solder and gild metal. Archæologists have divided the period into two main parts, the Earlier and the Later Iron Age, both with subdivisions. The Earlier Iron Age includes the time from the fifth century B.C. to about the beginning of the fifth century A.D. The first half of the Earlier Iron Age is characterized by swords with both blades and sheaths made of iron, thin crescent-shaped knives, brooches of iron, collars, and decorative plates overlaid with bronze. The graves resemble those from the end of the Bronze Age, containing burned bones in urns, or laid together in a heap. This circumstance makes it more than probable that the first introduction of iron in the North was not connected with any immigration of a new people. The finds of the earliest Iron Age are not very rich, but they prove that the people who have left them behind had been subjected to a very strong influence from the Gallic tribes living close to the south of the Teutonic area of population. Then came the second half of the Earlier Iron Age, characterized by a strong Roman influence. It commences with the extension of the Roman empire toward the North, about the beginning of the Christian era, and winds up with the beginning of the fifth century, when Teutonic migrations and invasions put an end to the power of Rome. In the hostile or friendly relations between Romans and Teutons the Swedes were not involved. But by the peaceful ways of commerce the influence of Rome penetrated to the people of the North. Great numbers of Roman coins have been found in Sweden, and also vessels of bronze and glass, weapons, etc., as well as works of art, all turned out of workshops in Rome or its provinces. Out of about 4,760 Roman coins of this time found in Sweden, no less than 4,000 were found in the remarkable Island of Gothland, in the southern half of the Baltic, 90 in the neighboring island of Œland, 650 in Scania, but only 23 on the mainland of Sweden, excluding Scania. About 250 were found in Bornholm, 600 in Denmark, but only 3 in Norway. It becomes evident from these finds that there existed a regular traffic over the Baltic, through Germany, between the Island of Gothland and the Roman provinces, from the epoch of the Marcomannic war down to the time of Septimius Severus. Similar finds have been made on the southern shore of the Baltic, showing that the traffic came from the southeast, along the valleys of the Vistula and the Oder.
One of the most important discoveries of this period was the art of writing, which the inhabitants of the North seem to have acquired soon after the beginning of the Christian era. The earliest alphabetic symbols in Sweden, and the only ones used there during the whole of heathen times, were runes. These were probably invented a little before the Christian era by a South Teutonic tribe, in imitation of the Roman writing which the Teutons received from one of the Celtic tribes living just to the north of the Alps. The Roman characters were adapted for the use of inscriptions in stone and wood, the curves being changed into straight lines. The Runic characters, in use among all Teutonic tribes, were twenty-four in number; these older runes were, by the Scandinavians, later simplified and reduced to sixteen. There is a number of inscriptions in older runes in Sweden, dating from about 300 to 500 A.D. They are found chiefly on stones and gold bracteates, also in England, France, Germany, Wallachia and the west of Russia. All belong to about the same date, and are of Teutonic origin. The early Runic inscriptions do not contain any accounts of historically known persons or events. Yet they are of the greatest historical importance, for they show that during the Earlier Iron Age, in the fourth and fifth centuries, the language of Sweden, and consequently also the people, were Teutonic. These inscriptions in Sweden and neighboring countries give samples of the earliest known form of the Northern language, which is considerably different from its descendants, the Old Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic, but very much resembling the language spoken by the Goths on the Danube during the same period.
The Later Iron Age commences with the fifth century and stretches to the beginning of the eighth century A.D. When Italy had been overrun by the “barbarians,” the centre of the old civilization shifted to Byzantium, and there are many traces of an active intercourse with the capital of the Byzantine rule in the finds made in Swedish soil. Most of these finds consist of gold coins of the fifth century, the majority of them having been found in the islands of Œland and Gothland. The stream of gold coming from Byzantium must have been quite considerable, having its source in the tribute which many of the Byzantine emperors had to pay to the Goths on the Danube. They are the very same emperors whose names appear on the coins found in Sweden. The great number of costly and beautiful ornaments of gold found in Sweden, and dating from this period, must have been made out of Roman and Byzantine coins, melted down. One of the largest hoards of gold ever found in Europe was discovered in the Swedish province of Sœdermanland. Its weight was twenty-seven pounds, and it contained several ornaments of consummate workmanship.
Remarkable are the graves from this period, discovered in the province of Upland. They are barrows containing the more or less mouldering remains of a large boat in which the dead man has been buried unburned with his weapons, horses, and other domestic animals. The swords found in these graves are of iron with hilts of beautiful designs in gilded or enamelled bronze. The shields and helmets are often of elaborate workmanship. Unlike the swords, which mostly, or perhaps always, are of foreign, generally of Celtic make, these ornaments and weapons are of domestic origin.
It appears, from the many beautiful and artistic finds in Swedish soil, as if the inhabitants have benefited by their situation, aside and outside of the rest of the world. Continual migrations subjected the tribes of the continent to repeated changes and to a never-ceasing series of new and heterogeneous impressions. The tribes of the North remained on the same spot, and their whole development was slower but more consistent. The foreign influences penetrated slowly and gradually, without crushing the old civilization. The industrial arts blossomed not so often in the North as in the South, but steadier, giving a clearer expression of the national traditions and peculiarities. These circumstances make the study of Northern antiquities of absorbing interest.
Before the end of this period, not only Gothaland and Svealand, but also the coast of Norrland, as far north as the province of Medelpad, were inhabited. As a whole, the first part of the Later Iron Age forms a transition between the Earlier Iron Age and the Viking Age, the archæological finds of which we must leave aside to take up the threads of the earliest history. The Viking Age is exceedingly rich in stones with inscriptions in the later runes, some of these inscriptions being quite lengthy, and containing strophes of alliterative verse in Old Swedish.
Before entering into an account of early Swedish history, let us gather what information the classical writers of history have to give in regard to the countries of the North, or rather whatever of such information that has been preserved to our day.
The Scandinavian countries are for the first time mentioned by the historians of antiquity in an account of a journey which Pyteas from Massilia (the present Marseille) made through Northern Europe, about 300 B.C. He visited Britain, and there heard of a great country, Thule, situated six days’ journey to the north, and verging on the Arctic Sea. The inhabitants in Thule were an agricultural people who gathered their harvest into big houses for threshing, on account of the very few sunny days and the plentiful rain in their regions. From corn and honey they prepared a beverage (probably the mead). By Thule is no doubt meant the Scandinavian peninsula, or rather the western coast of it. Pyteas also tells of the land of amber, or the southern shores of the Baltic, where the guttones are dwelling. As the northern and southern shores of the Baltic from the very earliest period seem to have been inhabited by the same race which has shared the same development and civilization, there is every reason to recognize the name guttones as identical with the one given to the inhabitants of the Swedish Gothaland and Island of Gothland.
Several centuries pass without any notice of Scandinavia in the classical literature. In the still preserved manuscripts of the geographical work by Pomponius Mela, written in the middle of the first century A.D., is found a reference to Codania, a large and fertile island inhabited by Teutons. Codania is likely some scribe’s misspelling of Scandinavia