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SURVEY OF ITS HISTORY.
S3
beginnings of agriculture. Every fresh advance meant the possibility of feeding
a larger population upon the same extent of ground; and the tribe which effected
such an advance thereby gained an advantage over its more backward
neighbours. The relatively high degree of culture that was attained by the
inhabitants of the North as early as the Stone Age, and is proved by their fine tools
and weapons, is best accounted for by the riches which flowed into the country
in consequence of the trade in amber, which in the South of Europe was as highly
valued as gold.
This wealth continued to flow into the North during a large part of the
Bronze Age too; and, under the influence of increased prosperity, the
manufacture of tools and of weapons was developed to a degree of artistic skill that
was only equalled in the lands bordering on the Mediterranean. Bronze seems
to have been pretty generally introduced into Sweden about 1750 b. c., and then,
probably, in exchange for the much sought-for amber. The economic development
which made this artistic skill possible presupposes, in its turn, the existence of
a comparatively well-ordered social organization, due, as usual among the earliest
Aryan peoples, to a gradual development from the restricted internal relationship
of the family to the wider circle of the community. The existence of such
communities is also proved by the enormous stone graves, which must have
required the systematic co-operation of hundreds of people for their erection.
It is not until the Iron Age (from the year 500 b. c.) that the Swedish
people first appears upon the stage of history. Like bronze, iron came from
the South of Europe by the trade-routes which took their course through Europe
along the great rivers; and new cultural influences followed in its track. It was
now — the exact date is still uncertain — that there first appeared runic
inscriptions, an imitation of the alphabetical writings of southern peoples. Already
there were cultivated tracts around Lake Mälaren and far north towards the
shores of the Gulf of Bothnia. As far as we can judge, the culture of Sweden
at that time must have closely resembled that described by Caesar and Tacitus
as existing among the Teutons who first encountered the armies of Rome. The
formation of communities grew in ever wider and wider circles: from the
family to the hundred ("härad"), and from that to the county or province. The
earlier phases of this development must certainly be dated much farther back
than the time usually accepted; but the formation of communities proceeded
during a continued series of disturbing interruptions. According to the
conceptions of law early developed among the Teutons, heads of the clans and kings
considered their territories as the freehold or possession of the family. This
possession was inherited in accordance with the same rules that held good for
other allodial property, in such wise that younger sons too had to have a share
in the inheritance. As soon, therefore, as a father had more than one son, it
became an impossibility to keep the kingdom together; and the Ynglinga Saga
describes how the earliest realm in Svealand became rent by incessant divisions
among brothers.
When the clans of the North first began to congregate into larger kingdoms,
it was natural that those regions united between which water formed a means
of communication. The seas united, whilst mountain and forest divided; and
thus the Danish realm gathered about the Sound and the Great and Little
Belts, and the Swedish realm about Lakes Mälaren, Vänern, and Vättern, whilst
the isolated mountain glens of Norway were the last to attain political unity. We
know, from English sources, that about 500 a. d. there ruled in Svealand a
family named Skilfingar, which, by means of conquests, extended its way towards
Götaland. When the native Swedish traditions first attain to any degree of
credibility, the territory of this race had already dissolved into petty states, which
corresponded pretty nearly to the existing provinces of Sweden. But there was still at
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