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SURVEY OF ITS HISTORY.
69
threly high degree of culture reached by the inhabitants of the North as early as
in the Stone-age, as 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 was as highly valued as gold.
This wealth continued to flow into the North during a large part of the
Breue-age too, and under the influence of increased opulence, the manufacture
of tools and of weapons was developed to a degree of artistic skill that was only
afterwards equaled in the lands bordering on the Mediterranean. Bronze seems to
have been more generally introduced into Sweden about 1750 B.C., and then,
probably, in exchange for the much sought-for amber. The economical development
which made this artistic skill possible pre-supposes, in its turn, the existence of
a comparatively well-ordered social organization, due, as usual among the earliest
Arian 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 systematical co-operation of hundreds of people- for their erection.
It is not until during the Iron-age (from the year 500 B.C.) that our nation
first appears upon the stage of history. Iron came from the South, as bronze had
done, 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 runic inscriptions first arose, as an imitation of the
alphabetical writings of southern nations. Already there were cultivated tracts
around Lake Mälaren and far north towards the shorés of the Gulf of Bothnia. From
what we can judge, the culture of Sweden at that time must have closely
resembled that of the Germans who first encountered the armies of Rome, as described
by Cæsar and Tacitus. The formation of communities grew in ever wider and
wider circles; from the family to the hundred (chiirad») 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 supposed, but the formation of
communities has proceeded during a continued sequence of disturbing interruptions.
According to the conception of right early developed among the Teutons, heads of
the clans and kings considered their territories as the free-hold 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 also younger sons 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
Ynglingasaga 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 tracts confederated between which water formed a
means of communication. The sea united, whilst mountain and forest divided,
and thus the Danish realm gathered about the Sound and the Great and Little
Belts, and the Swedish about Lakes Mälaren, Venern, and Vettern, whilst the
isolated mountain valleys of Norway were the last to attain national unity.
We know, from early English sources, that about A.D. 500 there ruled in
Svealand a race named Skilfingar, which, by means of conquests, extended its
rule towards Götaland. When our own traditions first attain to any degree of
credibility, the territory of this race had already fallen into small states, which
corresponded pretty nearly to our existing provinces. But still there was at
Uppsala a great and much honoured God House looked up to by all the kings
and people 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 Ingjald gained possession of their kingdoms, thereby laying
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