Upper Paleolithic As the ice receded reindeer grazed on the plains of Denmark and southernmost Sweden. This was the land of the
Ahrensburg culture, whose members hunted over territories 100,000 km2 vast and lived in
teepees on the
tundra. On this land there was little forest but
arctic white birch and
rowan, but the
taiga slowly appeared.
Mesolithic The
Scandinavian peninsula was the last part of
Europe to be colonized after the
Last Glacial Maximum. The migration routes, cultural networks, and the genetic makeup of the first Scandinavians remain elusive and several hypotheses exist based on archaeology, climate modeling, and genetics. Analysis of genomes of early
Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers (SHGs) from the cave
Stora Förvar on
Stora Karlsö,
Stora Bjers on Gotland,
Hummervikholmen in
Norway showed that migrations followed two routes: one from the south and another from the northeast along the ice-free Norwegian Atlantic coast. These groups met and mixed in Scandinavia, creating a population more diverse than contemporaneous central and
western European hunter-gatherers. In the 7th millennium BC, when the reindeer and their hunters had moved for northern Scandinavia, forests had been established in the land. A culture called the
Maglemosian culture lived in Denmark and southern Sweden, and north of them, in Norway and most of southern Sweden, the
Fosna-Hensbacka culture, who lived mostly along the shores of the thriving forests. Utilizing fire, boats and stone tools enabled these
Stone Age inhabitants to survive life in northern
Europe. The northern hunter/gatherers followed the herds and the salmon runs, moving south during the winters, and moving north again during the summers. These early peoples followed cultural traditions similar to those practiced throughout other regions in the far-north areas, including modern Finland, Russia, and across the
Bering Strait into the northernmost strip of North America (containing portions of today's
Alaska and Canada) . The Maglemosian people lived in forest and wetland environments using fishing and hunting tools made from wood, bone and flint
microliths. A characteristic of the culture are the sharply edged microliths of
flintstone which were used for spear heads and arrowheads. Microliths finds are more sparse from c. 6000 BC and the period is said to transit into the
Kongemose culture (c. 6000–5200 BC). The finds from this period are characterised by long flintstone flakes which were used for making the characteristic rhombic arrowheads, scrapers, drills, awls and toothed blades. During the 6th millennium BC, southern Scandinavia was clad in lush forests of
temperate broadleaf and mixed forests. In these forests roamed animals such as
aurochs,
wisent,
moose and
red deer. Now, the
Kongemose culture lived off these animals. Like their predecessors, they also hunted seals and fished in the rich waters. North of the Kongemose people, lived other
hunter-gatherers in most of southern Norway and Sweden, called the
Nøstvet and Lihult cultures, descendants of the Fosna and Hensbacka cultures. These cultures still hunted, in the end of the 6th millennium BC when the Kongemose culture was replaced by the
Ertebølle culture in the south.
Neolithic was an offshoot of the
Corded Ware culture, and replaced the
Funnelbeaker culture in southern Scandinavia, probably through a process of mass migration and population replacement. During the 5th millennium BC, the Ertebølle culture took up point-based pottery, from human groups in the eastern Baltic areas (
Narva). About 4000 BC south Scandinavia up to River
Dalälven in Sweden became part of the
Funnelbeaker culture (4000–2700 BC), a culture that originated in southern parts of Europe and slowly advanced up through today's
Uppland, Sweden. In southern Scandinavia it replaced the Ertebølle culture, which had maintained a Mesolithic lifestyle for about 1500 years after farming arrived in Central Europe. Tribes along the coasts of
Svealand,
Götaland,
Åland, northeastern Denmark and southern Norway learnt new technologies that became the
Pitted Ware culture (3200–2300 BC). The
Pitted Ware culture then developed along Sweden's east coast as a return to a hunting economy in the mid-4th millennium BC (see the
Alvastra pile-dwelling). Genetically, the Funnelbeaker culture population was of
Neolithic Anatolian origin with a proportion of Hunter-gatherer ancestries. This archaeological culture is well-known for its intensive building of enclsoures and megalithic tombs, which are very similar to those found in many regions of western Europe. Before medieval and modern church building requeired stones and before modern land use started, the number of megaliths in northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia was much higher than today. In Denmark, 2,800 monuments are registered and about 7,300 additional examples existed. In northern Germany,
Johannes Müller reports 11,658 known monuments. He expects about 75.000 megaliths to have originally been constructed. Additionally, in the distribution area of this culture, thousands of deposition of (partly extremely large 40–50 cm or more)
flint axes appear and finely made
battle axes (often double axes) of hard stone. Towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, they were overrun by new groups who many scholars think spoke
Proto-Indo-European, the
Battle-Axe culture. This new people with
Steppe-derived ancestry advanced up to Uppland and the
Oslofjord, and they probably provided the language that was the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages. This new culture had the battle axe as a status symbol, and were cattle herders. ==Bronze Age==