578 SCANDINAVIAN ARCHEOLOGY. 



At the beginning of this century, Sjoborg, professor of history, at 

 Lund, deserved credit for his activity in investigating the remains of the 

 country, in order to make up its archaeological topography and statistics; 

 in 1805, he obtained from the government a decree ordering the preser- 

 vation of prehistoric remains. The fruits of his labors are published in 

 several memoirs, but especially in a work entitled Samlingar for Nor- 

 densfornwlskare (collections for those interested in northern antiquity), 

 i-iii, 1822-'23. The Gotiska forbundet (Gothic Union), a literary so- 

 ciety, founded in 1811, by some learned and patriotic young men, has 

 also done much to spread the knowledge of the national antiquities ; its 

 literary organ, Iduna, must be considered as the first periodical publi- 

 cation of Swedish archaeology. At this time many private collections 

 of antiquities were founded, the most of which have since been acquired 

 by the museum of Stockholm. 



The theory of the three ages of civilization enunciated in 1813, by the 

 Dane Vedel-Simonsen, was accepted by Magnus Bruzelius, at Lund 

 {Specimen antiquitatum borealium, 1816). The illustrious Geijer ap- 

 proved it in his work, Svenska folkets /mtono. (The History of the Swed- 

 ish People), 1832. 



In 1830, Dr. B. E. Hildebrand, of Lund, went to Copenhagen to study 

 thereunder Mr. Thomsen, numismatics and northern antiquities; on 

 his return he was appointed chief of the arch. geological collection at 

 Lund, which he classified according to the system of the three periods 

 communicated to him by Mr. Thomsen. In 1833, Hildebrand was called 

 to Stockholm to arrange the numismatic collection and the old museum 

 of antiquities, hitherto however without any importance. Hildebrand 

 thus became the true founder of this museum ; in the beginning he 

 classified it according to the ideas of Mr. Thomsen. In 1837, appointed 

 antiquary of the kingdom, he had during a long energetic administra- 

 tion the opportunity of being very active for the enlargement of the 

 museum, so that in 1879, he was able to commit it into the hands of his 

 son and successor, as an institution of the first rank. 



Another illustrious man is also to be named at the beginning of pa- 

 leo-ethnological studies in Sweden in our century. As the introduction 

 to a new edition of his work Skandinavicns Fauna, the celebrated 

 zoologist Sveu Nilssou, at Lund, in 1834, published a remarkable 

 memoir: Udkast til Jagtens og Fiskeriets Historie i Skandinavien (out 

 line of a history of hunting and fishing in Scandinavia). He there 

 sketches the life of the tirst inhabitants; they were as yet unac- 

 quainted with metals, and lived as hunters and fishers: they had only 

 tools of stone and of wood. He gives detailed descriptions of the different 

 kinds of tools found, investigates their use, and compares them with 

 those of peoples still savage, particularly with those of the Greenlanders 

 and Australians. Then after having visited the museums of Copen- 

 hagen and several ethnographic collections abroad, he published in 

 1838-^43 his famous work Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvanare. (The 



