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5 AND 6. FIRST AND SECOND PERIODS OF IRON AGE. 19
6. SECOND PERIOD OF THE IRON AGE, 50 B.C. 400 A.D.
THE SUIONES ALREADY IN SWEDEN. THE AGE
OF GOTHIC IMMIGRATION AND MIGRATION, OF
THE RUNES AND OF ODIN.
The opening of the second period of the Iron Age coin
cides with the Gallic wars of Julius Caesar and the impulse
given to the Germanic tribes by the pressure of Roman
conquests up to and beyond the Rhine. The defeat of
Varus in the Teutoberger Forest left the North German
tribes free from the actual presence of Roman rulers, but
one tribe naturally communicated the backward impulse
to another, until, in time, it reached the Baltic and the
Cimbric Chersonese and Scandia. It is to this pressure
that I should assign three things, the migration of the
Goths to Scandia, the introduction of writing and poetry,
and the worship of Odin. This period extends from the
Christian era to about the year 400 A.D.
Different opinions have been held as to the rela
tive date of the settlement of the two great tribes of
Sweden in that country; but the balance of evidence seems
to me to tell strongly in favour of the priority of the
Sveas. Not only do we find the latter always to the
north of the Goths, but the few early historical notices
which we have coincide with the natural presumption that
they retired or concentrated northward under pressure of
the Goths from the south. The Goths, or Gythons,
indeed, are mentioned in classical literature earlier than
the Sveas, but as inhabitants of the German mainland,
not of the peninsula. When the Suiones are first men
tioned by Tacitus it is as being in ipso oceano. If the
Goths had been then beside them it was part of his plan
to mention them. My conclusion then is that the Goths
were still on the mainland. Let me give the evidence in
some detail.
The first writer of antiquity who is quoted as naming
these regions, Pytheas of Marseilles, a contemporary of
Alexander the Great, speaks of the Guttones as a German
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