Prehistoric Sweden

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Human habitation of present-day Sweden began c. 12000 BC. The earliest known people belonged to the Bromme culture of the Late Palaeolithic, spreading from the south at the close of the Last Glacial Period. Neolithic farming culture became established in the southern regions around 4000 BC, but much later further north. About 1700 BC the Nordic Bronze Age began in the southern regions, based on imported metals; this was succeeded about 500 BC by the Iron Age, for which local ore deposits were exploited. Cemeteries are known mainly from 200 BC onward.

During the 1st century AD, imports of Roman artifacts increased. Agricultural practice spread northward, and permanent field boundaries were constructed in stone. Hillforts became common. A wide range of metalwork, including gold ornaments, are known from the following Migration Period (c. 400–550 AD) and Vendel Period (c. 550–790 AD).

Sweden's Iron Age is considered to extend up to the end of the Viking Age, with the introduction of stone architecture and the Christianization of Scandinavia about 1100 AD. The historical record up to then is sparse and unreliable; the first known Roman reports of Sweden are in Tacitus (98 AD). The runic script was developed in the second century, and the brief inscriptions that remain demonstrate that the people of south Scandinavia then spoke Proto-Norse, a language ancestral to modern Swedish.