Human habitation of present-day Sweden began around 12000 BC. The earliest known people belonged to the

Bromme culture The Bromme culture ( da, Brommekultur) is a late Upper Paleolithic culture dated to c. 11,600 to 9,800 cal BC, which corresponds to the second half of the Allerød Oscillation. At this time, reindeer was the most important prey, but the Bromme pe ...

of the Late Palaeolithic, spreading from the south at the close of the Last Glacial Period.

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

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 The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

, for which local ore deposits were exploited. Cemeteries are known mainly from 200 BC onward. During the 1st century CE, imports of

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

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 The Migration Period was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman ...

(about 400–550 AD) and

Vendel Period In Swedish prehistory, the Vendel Period ( sv, Vendeltiden; 540–790 AD) appears between the Migration Period and the Viking Age. The name is taken from the rich boat inhumation cemetery at Vendel parish church, Uppland. This is a period wit ...

(about 550 –790 AD). Sweden's Iron Age is considered to extend up to the end of the

Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Ger ...

, with the introduction of stone architecture and the

Christianization of Scandinavia The Christianization of Scandinavia, as well as other Nordic countries and the Baltic countries, took place between the 8th and the 12th centuries. The realms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden established their own Archdioceses, responsible directly ...

about 1100 AD. The historical record up to then is sparse and unreliable; the first known Roman reports of Sweden are in

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historiography, Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his t ...

(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 Proto-Norse (also called Ancient Nordic, Ancient Scandinavian, Ancient Norse, Primitive Norse, Proto-Nordic, Proto-Scandinavian and Proto-North Germanic) was an Indo-European language spoken in Scandinavia that is thought to have evolved as a ...

, a language ancestral to modern

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

Timeline of Swedish history

Period = from:-8000 till:2006 ImageSize= width:800 height:auto barincrement:21 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:80 left:30 bottom:40 top:5 AlignBars = justify Colors = id:bg value:white id:epoch value:rgb(1,0.9,0.9) id:stoneage value:rgb(1,0.85,0.85) id:bronzeage value:rgb(1,1,0.6) id:bronzeage2 value:rgb(0.9,0.9,0.5) id:ironage value:rgb(0.8,1,0.8) id:vendelera value:rgb(0.9,1,0.6) id:vikingage value:rgb(0.9,0.9,0.6) id:current value:rgb(0.9,0.9,0.9) id:lightline value:rgb(0.8,0.8,0.8) id:header value:rgb(0.8,0.8,0.9) id:lighttext value:rgb(0.5,0.5,0.5) id:migrations value:rgb(1,0.7,1) id:early value:rgb(0.7,1,0.7) BackgroundColors = canvas:bg ScaleMajor = gridcolor:lightline unit:year increment:1000 start:-8000 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:500 start:-8000 BarData = Bar:epochs Barset:stoneages Bar:bronzeages Bar:bronzeageperiods Barset:ironages Barset:contages Barset:earlyhist PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black bar:epochs color:epoch mark:(line,black) from:-8000 till:-7500 shift:(-25,0) text:" Ancylus age" from:-7500 till:-4000 text:" Litorina age" from:-4000 till:end text:"Post-Litorina age" barset:stoneages mark:(line,white) color:stoneage from:-8000 till:-1800 text:"

Nordic Stone Age The Nordic Stone Age refers to the Stone Age of Scandinavia. During the Weichselian glaciation (115,000 – 11,700 years ago), almost all of Scandinavia was buried beneath a thick permanent ice cover, thus, the Stone Age came rather late to thi ...

" color:epoch from:-8000 till:-7000 shift:(-10,0) text:" Upper Paleolithic" color:epoch from:-7000 till:-5000 text:"

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...

" color:epoch from:-5000 till:-1800 text:"

" barset:break bar:bronzeages color:bronzeage from:-1800 till:-600 shift:(-34,0) text:" Nordic Bronze Age" bar:bronzeageperiods color:epoch color:bronzeage from:-1800 till:-1500 shift:(-3,0) text:"I" color:bronzeage2 from:-1500 till:-1300 shift:(-4,0) text:"II" color:bronzeage from:-1300 till:-1100 shift:(-4,0) text:"III" color:bronzeage2 from:-1100 till:-900 shift:(-5,0) text:"IV" color:bronzeage from:-900 till:-600 shift:(-4,0) text:"V" color:bronzeage2 from:-600 till:-500 shift:(-4,0) text:"VI" barset:ironages color:ironage from:-600 till:1 shift:(-20,0) text:" Pre-Roman Iron Age" color:ironage from:1 till:400 shift:(-15,0)text:" Roman Iron Age" color:ironage from:400 till:800 shift:(-15,0)text:"

Germanic Iron Age The archaeology of Northern Europe studies the prehistory of Scandinavia and the adjacent North European Plain, roughly corresponding to the territories of modern Sweden, Norway, Denmark, northern Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. The regio ...

" color:vendelera from:550 till:793 shift:(-5,0)text:"

Vendel era In Swedish prehistory, the Vendel Period ( sv, Vendeltiden; 540–790 AD) appears between the Migration Period and the Viking Age. The name is taken from the rich boat inhumation cemetery at Vendel parish church, Uppland. This is a period wit ...

" color:vikingage from:793 till:1066 shift:(-10,0)text:"

" color:migrations from:300 till:900 shift:(-20,0)text:"

" barset:earlyhist color:early from:800 till:1523 shift:(-25,0) text:"

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

" color:early from:1523 till:end shift:(-15,0) text:" Modern Sweden"

Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, 12,000–4,000 BC

Stone Age Scandinavian populations movement after the last glacial

The

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

glaciations scoured the landscape clean and covered much of it in deep quaternary sediments. Therefore, no undisputed Early or

Middle Palaeolithic The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleoli ...

sites or finds are known from Sweden. As far as it is currently known, the country's prehistory begins in the Allerød

interstadial Stadials and interstadials are phases dividing the Quaternary period, or the last 2.6 million years. Stadials are periods of colder climate while interstadials are periods of warmer climate. Each Quaternary climate phase is associated with a Ma ...

c. 12,000 BC with Late Palaeolithic hunting camps of the

at the edge of the ice in what is now the country's southernmost province. Shortly before the close of the Younger Dryas (c. 9,600 BC), the west coast of Sweden (Bohuslän) was visited by hunter-gatherers from northern Germany. This cultural group is commonly referred to as the

Ahrensburgian The Ahrensburg culture or Ahrensburgian (c. 12,900 to 11,700 BP) was a late Upper Paleolithic nomadic hunter culture (or technocomplex) in north-central Europe during the Younger Dryas, the last spell of cold at the end of the Weichsel glaciatio ...

and were engaged in fishing and sealing along the coast of western Sweden during seasonal rounds from the Continent. Currently, we refer to this group as the Hensbacka culture and, in Norway, as the Fosna culture group (see: Oxford Journal Hensbacka Schmitt). During the late Preboreal period, colonization continued as people move towards the north-east as the ice receded. Archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that they arrived first from the south-west and, in time, also from the north-east and met half-way. The genomes of early Scandinavian hunter-gatherers show that the group from the south and the another one from the northeast eventually mixed in Scandinavia. Besides their cultural differences in e.g. tool making, the two groups also differed in appreance. The populations from the south had darker skin and blue eyes while the groups arriving from the north had light skin and variance in eye color. An important consequence of de-glaciation was a continual land uplift as the Earth's crust rebounded from the pressure exerted by the ice. This process, which was originally very rapid, continues to this day. It has had the consequence that originally shore-bound sites along much of Sweden's coast are sorted chronologically by elevation. Around the country's capital, for instance, the earliest seal-hunter sites are now on inland mountain tops, and they grow progressively later as one moves downhill toward the sea. The Late

Palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

gave way to the first phase of the

in c. 9,600 BC. This age, divided into the Maglemosian, Kongemosian and Ertebølle Periods, was characterised by small bands of hunter-gatherer-fishers with a

microlithic A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The ...

flint technology. Where flint was not readily available, quartz and slate were used. In the later Ertebølle, semi-permanent fishing settlements with pottery and large

inhumation Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a