THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENTS

In comparison with other parts of Europe, what is today Sweden, as a geographical entity with its modern coastal contours, is of relatively recent formation, its modern emergence the result of the end of the last Ice Age, which sheeted much of Europe until about ten thousand years ago. It began to emerge from its glacial covering of ice first in Scania, in the south. There the ice had disappeared by about 11,000 bc. Further north, the glaciers in and around what later became Stockholm vanished only around 8000 bc and it took a further four thousand years for the ice to disappear in most of the rest of the country. Indeed, in parts of Norrland, in the far north, some ice remained until just before the beginning of the Christian era. Therefore, it is only from this period that one can begin to speak of Sweden’s prehistory, since there can remain no trace of any possible human presence from before the Ice Age.

The first human arrivals in Sweden in the aftermath of the Ice Age came predominantly from Denmark. They travelled across the Sound which today separates the two countries but, before the mid seventeenth century, was under Danish sovereignty on both sides for centuries. The earliest human settlement so far to be uncovered is that found in the far south of the country, at Segebro, near Malmö, which dates to about 10,000–9000 years bc. Another early settlement was that at Hensbacka, in Bohuslän, which can be dated to 7300–6600 bc. It was sustained by reindeer hunting, an important source of food for many of the Nordic region’s inhabitants, even as far north as Pechenga (Petsamo, when it was Finnish between the two world wars), in what is today the far north-west of the Russian Federation. This common dependence on reindeer is an indication that a land route through the north of what is today Finland into Sweden may have been an important conduit, not only for reindeer but for migratory people as well.