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84
It. THE SWEDISH PEOPLE.
Uppsala a great and much honoured God House (gudahov), looked up to by all the
kings and peoples of Sweden. By degrees, this God House acquired ever greater estates
throughout the whole country; and without any other dominion than these estates,
its ruler was at last able to defy the petty monarchs of the country. By guile
and by force, king Ingiald gained possession of their kingdoms, thereby laying the
foundations of the Kingdom of Sweden proper. It is difficult to determine
the date of this event, but it was probably about 700 a. d. The kingdom of
Sweden as an undivided whole is thus, at the present moment, about 1200
years old, and is consequently older than any other state now existing in
Europe.
The extent of the Swedish kingdom at that time did not quite coincide with
that of Sweden nowadays: the most southern province, Skåne, still belonged
to Denmark, as did also the province of Halland. The northernmost parts of
Sweden, too, were then scarcely occupied, only a few solitary Lapps finding
their scanty subsistence there.
The ancient Uppsala- or "Ynglinga’-dynasty ruled the kingdom of Sweden
uninterruptedly till about the year 1050. To this time belongs that period in
the history of the North which was so important for the whole of Europe and
which is called
231
A Viking ship.
The Viking Period (800—lOSO a. d.J. From time immemorial the
inhabitants of the North had made voyages from their extensive sea-coast
to the neighbouring lands; but a much improved method of constructing
their ships, which made it easier and safer to employ sails, caused these
voyages to be extended to far greater distances. From the close of the
eighth century, the fleets of the Vikings swarmed round all the coasts of
Europe, as far as the Straits of Gibraltar, where the powerful dominion of
the Moors set a limit to their advance, which had spread terror and horror
wherever else their ships appeared. At home, there was instituted the ledung,
a forced service at sea which, rendering communication along the coast
more easy, powerfully contributed to hold together the kingdoms once formed.
From very early times a lively intercourse had existed between Sweden and the
lands round the Gulf of Finland, where a numerous Swedish population had
been established for some thousands of years. The contact with the
mother-country now became very much livelier; and the trade with Asia, between the
Baltic and the Caspian Seas, which had arisen in the time of the Caliphate, attracted
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