Talk:Scandinavian prehistory

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Contents

[edit] 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.

[edit] Battle Axe a macho symbol?

Is calling the Battle Axe "macho" really good writing... is it not more of a status symbol?

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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? MrZaiustalk 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)

[edit] Move to Nordic Prehistory

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. 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.

The result of the proposal was 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 proposal. 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.

[edit] 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)