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live-stock.
79
2. LIVE-STOCK.
In general, and the rearing of cattle and pigs in particular.
Since time immemorial, cattle-rearing has been the principal industry of
Sweden. Even during the later Stone Age, the civilization that had been
represented by hunters and fishers in the south and centre of Sweden had
been obliged to make wa3^ for the megalithic agricultural civilization that
was introduced by an Arian pastoral race — the primitive Germans ■—
when these began to drive farther and farther to the north and east the
earliest dwellers in Scandinavia, i. e. the race from which the Laplanders
and the Finländers of to-day are descended. This hunting and fishing race,
which dwelt by the shores of lakes and waterways, had only one
domestic animal, the dog; while the forefathers of the present Swedes —
the invading primitive Germans — brought with them from the south
domestic animals of various kinds, such as the horse, horned cattle, sheep,
goats, and swine.
These animals throve in these northern climes and increased
tremendously, so that, from the very beginning, their rearing became the very
centre of the husbandry of Sweden, a position which it has retained to
the present day. It is true that efforts have now and then been made to
raise the cultivation of grain to this supremacy, but all the attempts made
to displace the rearing of live stock from its premier position in Sweden
have hitherto proved ineffectual.
In spite of its prominent position in the agricultural economy of the
country, the live-stock industry in Sweden has had its periods of
weakness, periods when it was neglected, when it was regarded as a necessary
evil and injurious to the economic welfare of the country, but it has always
recovered, and with renewed strength once more regained the proud
position it formerly held.
»Such a period of weakness occurred during the earlier Middle Ages, but, thanks
to the interest which the monks, the Cistercians especially, devoted to the
development of cattle-rearing, the results they obtained have never been
surpassed until our own times.
On the next occasion when the industry was in peril, it was taken in hand
by King Gustavus Vasa, the great "State Economist", who, by means of
importing more vigorous foreign breeds, and by means of a well-arranged system of
feeding, succeeded in once more raising the standard of the Swedish cattle.
This improvement, which, in a great measure, was due to the king’s own
initiative and superintendence, lasted only until some few years after his death,
Sweden then being swept by exterior forces into the vortex of lengthy wars, when
the resources of the country had, for the most part, to be devoted to furthering
Swedish interests abroad.
At the period of the death of Charles XII (1118), the cattle-rearing industry
of Sweden was on the brink of ruin, but it was rescued during the "Period of
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