I’ve been reading Swedish history this week.
1 to 1800 BC
1 to 1800 BC
In the beginning there was nothing. Sounds
sort of biblical doesn’t it? Sweden was just a big slab of ice and
nobody was home until 14,000 years ago when the ice was almost done
defrosting. It was the Stone Age, but people didn’t know how to get
stoned back then. They were happy if they could just stay warm. The
first people here were like, Swedish Indians, called the Sami. They
lived pretty good and ate oysters, wild duck, and fish, which were
easier to catch than reindeer and the hairy rhinos that were running
around back then. They also had chewing gum made out of birch pitch and
beeswax, but they didn’t know how to make cigarettes. Nobody knows where
the Sami came from . . . maybe Finland. The oldest Swede they ever
found was called, Bäckaskog (black forest) woman.
She
was buried in a hole at Skåne, with a spear and a fishing pole.
Bäckaskog had been there for about 8000 years. I don’t know where she is
now, probably in a museum somewhere. Some people got buried with their
dogs back then, but the cats were smart enough to get the hell out when a
funeral was being planned. A lot of Swedes still have fishing poles,
but they don’t get buried with them anymore.
Some Germans immigrants got here by
traveling north through the area now known as Skåne, which is south of
Stockholm, but Stockholm had not been invented yet. The Germans were
probably hunting for reindeer and hairy rhinoceroses, or maybe they just
needed ice cubes. The rhinoceroses later moved to Africa where it was
warmer and they didn’t need hair.
One day, 6,000 years ago some hunters decided farming would an easier
gig than hunting. They started raising goats and sheep brought here by
immigrants coming from the south. They call this period the Farming
Stone Age. Sweden was warm and humid at the time, which is hard to
believe, but it’s in the book.
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