Talk:Scandinavian prehistory

Stone Age stuff
This stuff about flint economy, which was edited out with the new (and no doubt better and more detailed) account of the Stone Age needs to be fitted in again somewhere:


 * During the Stone Age, Sweden was very sparsely inhabited by hunter-gatherers except for the southernmost parts, where a large population was established, probably much due to the abundance of flint stone. Öresund, Great Belt, Little Belt and Kattegatt are the only places in the nordic countries with large amounts of flint suited for tools and weapons. For this reason that region is believed to have been the economic and political center of the first Stone Age cultures in Sweden and Denmark: good finds of flint embedded in limestone was mined in rectangular shafts of 1/2 - 3 meters depth (which have been found for example east of Malmö), processed into tools and weapons, and exported.


 * The dominance of this flint-based culture does not end until large amounts of metal is imported, and stone tools are used even during the Nordic Bronze Age, the use of flint as a raw material does not end until locally mined iron can be used with the advent of the Pre-Roman Iron Age.

This part is older (not written by me) but should be incorporated into some Stone Age religion section, possibly at the main article on the Nordic Stone Age rather than here:


 * Sweden, as well as the adjacent country Norway, has a high concentration of petroglyphs (ristningar or hällristningar in Swedish) throughout the country, with the highest concentration in the province of Bohuslän. The earliest images can however be found in the northern province of Jämtland, dated from 9000 BC they depict wild animals such as moose, reindeer, bears and seals. The most common interpretation is that these early petroglyphs depict religious elements of a hunter-gatherer culture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nixdorf (talk • contribs) 18:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Battle Axe a macho symbol?
Is calling the Battle Axe "macho" really good writing... is it not more of a status symbol? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nixdorf (talk • contribs) 18:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Iron Age stuff
That´s silly - it just about legendary figures of the Old Norse literature and nothing about archaeology.--84.251.16.234 17:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Sami - Requested info
I came here wondering how the Sami people play into all this, but don't see a single explicit mention of the people in this article, although they are cursorily mentioned in a section of Sweden that links to this with Template:main. Would someone in the know please introduce mention of the Sami here? MrZaius talk  23:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the articles completely ignore Sami, although Sweden has offically recognised them as indigenious peoples per UN recommendation. --Pudeo⺮ 10:02, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Move to Nordic Prehistory

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

move to Scandinavian prehistory, per the discussion below. New redirects and some content alterations may be required, but I'll leave that up to the individual editors here. Dekimasu よ! 15:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC) I propose moving this page to Nordic Prehistory, since: (i) there are already other "Nordic" articles such as Nordic Stone Age and Nordic Bronze Age, (ii) it does not make sense to create articles for Prehistoric Norway, Prehistoric Denmark, Prehistoric Sapmi, etc.Labongo 12:29, 11 October 2007 (UTC)


 * No problem. I read through the article, and little of it is specifically about Sweden. / Fred-J 16:04, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose Actually, most of it is about Sweden specifically, from the first sentence onward; it may well be that Norway and Denmark are sufficiently like Sweden to be included (in which case Scandinavian prehistory would be better.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Well at least in my view, the sections "Stone age" and "Bronze Age" could be about either Scandinavian country.
 * Anyway, I agree that "Scandinavian prehistory" is better than "Nordic prehistory". This article doesn't mention Iceland and Finland but makes frequent references to Norway, Denmark and southern Sweden (then Danish). / Fred-J 11:23, 21 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move to Nordic Prehistory - part 2
This comment was moved from the above archived discussion. Labongo (talk) 12:27, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I'm a Swedish PhD and research archaeologist, and I'm thinking about putting some work into this article. It has recently been re-named "Scandinavian prehistory", but is actually a heavily error-ridden article about Swedish matters that someone has made slight attempts to expand into a pan-Scandy version. I'd prefer to re-name it back to Prehistoric Sweden and then go to work on it. In my opinion, the archaeology of all the Scandy/Nordic countries is very different, and thus merits one article each. Whatcha say? Martin Rundkvist (talk) 09:06, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * As a non-expert reader it would be nice to have regional articles that summarize the prehistory of for example Scandinavia. It seems to me, still not an expert, that using country borders to organize these early cultures is not the best way to do it. Were there not many cultures that were distributed among for example Norway and Sweden? However, it would be nice to have an expert improving this article, and I don't think anyone can oppose if you want to create a detailed article about Sweden. But I hope you can also write a few words about the pre-history of the other Scandinavian countries. Labongo (talk) 12:37, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I am also unsure, as Labongo. What fror example about Skåne, Halland and Blekinge? It was in those days more naturally linked to Denmark than to Sweden. Should it be described in an article about early Swedish history or in an article about Danish history? And the same issue probably arrises for Norrland, Gotland and Jämtland. / Fred-J 17:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The current borders of the Scandy countries are not expected to change anytime soon, and when discussing the Neolithic, neither today's borders nor the Medieval ones are particularly relevant. Anyway, I could do Sweden and Denmark to a decent standard, but not Norway or Finland. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 21:55, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

A skewed picture
I hope more information on the whole of Scandinavia will be put up in the future. as it is now there is only information about Sweden. I can see that there has been a solid discussion about a potential merging above, but however this turns out, we need info covering the areas of Denmark and Norway as well. And remember: the nations of Denmark, Sweden and Norway first came into existence at the end of the Viking Age, much later than pre-history. When these names are used, it is only to describe geographical locations.

RhinoMind (talk) 18:13, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Missing information tag
Hello. I have now inserted a missing information tag to the article. Let me document the reason for installing it.

It can sometimes be confusing what is actually meant when the word "Scandinavia" is mentioned. Scandinavia is a broader geographical area than the Scandinavian peninsula alone. It is important that this article include the pre-history of Scandinavia in the broadest sense possible. Mostly because pre-history is a cultural concept, not a purely geographical one. Also because it makes sense to gather all the information on the pre-history of the Scandinavian region in one place, or the meaning of the content would appear unnecessarily fragmented, as it is inter-related. RhinoMind (talk) 00:58, 24 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The term "Nordic" in "Nordic Bronze Age", "Nordic Stone Age", etc. is supposed to capture that. Articles on prehistoric cultures should be be divided along modern national borders but along cultural boundaries as they existed at the time. "Scandinavia" isn't a convenient division in this sense. "Nordic" means "Northern Europe" as in southern Scandinavia and the North European Plain, because that's roughly the extent of the archaeological cultures under discussion. --dab (𒁳) 08:41, 18 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi. This section was not made with the intention to start a discussion about anything. It was simply made to document and explain the tag I inserted, and nothing more than that. If we need to discuss anything, we should preferably do it in a new section. Anyway, for now, I need to point out, that there are several problems with your post.
 * Do you mean "Articles on prehistoric cultures should NOT be be divided along modern national borders but along cultural boundaries as they existed at the time." ? Otherwise I can not make sense of your post.
 * I can not grasp your point really. Could you perhaps explain what you mean in more detail and in more clear terms? Are you just trying to "correct" my understanding of what Nordic and Scandinavian means or do you have a point you want to get across?
 * Nordic is a very vague term. Strictly speaking Northern Europe also comprise the British Isles, which is clearly not part of the Nordic Brone Age, Nordic Stone Age or Nordic Iron Age for that matter. Anyway, there is no point in talking about "Nordic" in relation to this article, as long as the name of the article is Scandinavian prehistory. We could of course make up or move this article to a new Nordic prehistory article, but as long as that hasn't happened we must talk about what comprise Scandinavia.
 * Scandinavia is sometimes also a rather vague term, occasionally including Finland. But it always includes modern day Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
 * Scandinavia is a rather good choice, when describing the prehistory of modern day Scandinavia. Because the prehistoric cultures of modern day Norway, Sweden and Denmark are very similar and highly related. The prehistoric cultures of Finland is a bit different.
 * RhinoMind (talk) 21:06, 18 July 2016 (UTC)