THE STONE AGE IN HEATHEN SWEDEN. 



5°5 



The relics of the Stone age in Sweden, and incidentally in Scan- 

 dinavia generally, are described, and the testimony they give to the 

 kind of life the people lived is set forth in the first part of Dr. 

 Oscar Montelius's " Civilization of Sweden in Heathen Times " 

 (London and New York, Macmillan & Co.), from which, and the 

 Rev. F. Woods's intro- 

 duction, the facts and 

 illustrations in this ar- 

 ticle are derived. 



Our only clew to the 

 antiquity of human 

 settlement in Scandi- 

 navia is derived from 

 the evidence afforded 

 by certain finds of a 

 habitation of some 

 southern parts of the region by a people of the Stone age at a time 

 when firs were still the prevailing trees there. Since then the for- 

 ests of fir-trees have died out and made way for great forests of 

 oaks, " which covered the land till they in their turn succumbed 

 to the now prevailing beech woods." 



Fig. 1.— Hammering- Pebble. 



Fig. 2.— Flint Ar- 

 row-Head. 



Fig. 3.— Lunate Flint Saw. 



Traces of population at a somewhat later but still very early 

 date are found in the " kitchen-middens "—enormous collections 

 of shells, with bones, bearing marks of having been eaten from, 

 and remains of fireplaces and instruments — which are scattered 

 along the sea-coasts. 



Fig. 4.— Polished Grindstone, worn by Use. 



The tools with which the Northmen during the Stone age 

 produced their wooden works, and which are found at their old 

 resorts, were mainly knives, saws, borers, chisels, and axes or 

 hatchets. They were made out of flint, chipped into shape by 



vol. xxxv. — 32 



