Northern Connections: Interregional Contacts in Bronze Age Northern and Middle Sweden

Abstract

This article examines northern connections in the Nordic Bronze Age, focusing on interregional contacts in middle and northern Sweden. In the article, we argue that it is important to incorporate a northern perspective in the discussions about the Scandinavian Bronze Age and its networks. We focus on the Mälaren Valley region, especially the province of Uppland, and the northern parts of Sweden, in particular the coastal areas of northern Sweden. We discuss some aspects of the archaeological material, which have been used in earlier discussions of interregional contacts in middle and northern Sweden during the Bronze Age, such as the Håga mound outside of Uppsala, and burial cairns and bronze artefacts in northern Sweden. Furthermore, we discuss eastern contacts with areas in present-day Finland and Russia, and how these have been interpreted in middle and northern Sweden. In our view, there is a need to critically examine interregional contacts and the construction of regional entities and borders in the Bronze Age. In order to better understand the relations between north and south, it is necessary to critically examine the research history behind the present-day conceptions of regions and borders, as well as the political dimensions and power relations involved.

Towards a Broader Understanding of the Emergence of Iron Technology in Prehistoric Arctic Fennoscandia

“…Even though the exchange networks of an eastern origin have long been the focus of north Fennoscandian archaeologists, broader discussions over these relations are generally lacking, and the eastern contacts still play the role of the unknown and unexplored. Theories that have been put forth have not led to any in-depth studies of the material culture of the communities in the Volga-Kama region, or of the character of long-distance contacts (Ojala & Ojala 2020).…”

“…Hence, the emergence of iron technology is inevitable linked to complex farming populations, regardless of temporal scale. In the same dichotomic way, early (to the mid twentieth century) Scandinavian archaeology typically treated the northern parts of Scandinavia as something separate, different and liminal in relation to the ‘national’ and ‘southern Scandinavian/Nordic’ (Hagström-Yamamoto 2010; Ojala & Ojala 2020). Likewise, the Arctic has been treated as something separate and different in relation to the Nordic (Bakka 1976), and inland as something separate from coastal Arctic Fennoscandia (Hansen & Olsen 2014; Jørgensen 2010; Sundquist 1999).…”

“…Hence, northern Fennoscandia as a border zone between western and eastern cultural spheres is a strong notion in Fennoscandian literature (e.g. Nordqvist 2018; Sørensen et al 2013), along with the division of the coastal and inland communities of northern Fennoscandia into two different cultural and economic systems (based typically on the distribution of ceramics and metals), with inland societies considered proto-Sámi and coastal societies proto-farmers, antecedents of the Scandinavian/Germanic population (Ojala & Ojala 2020). Lately, since the archaeological material nevertheless show great diversity even within small regions (Kuusela 2020), archaeologists have divided Arctic Fennoscandia into even smaller systems (Ramqvist 2007; 2012), and further contributed to interpretations of the appearance of hybridity cultures in the form of, e.g., ‘Sámi practising cultivation’ (Bergman & Hörnberg 2015).…”

“…With the persistent ambition to fit material culture into existing developmental trajectories, or use it as markers of cultural identity, follows a lack of focus on how technology transferred, of the social content and form of exchange pathways and of the local adoption and maintenance of new technologies. This has recently been highlighted in archaeological literature (Ojala & Ojala 2020), such as the problems of applying find-categories in local contexts to large, homogenous Sámi (and Germanic) ethnic categories, and on weak empirical grounds (Ojala 2014). Although we reaffirm the importance of formulating a long-neglected past, regarding ethnic categorized historiography in northern Fennoscandia of recent years, we join Wallerström (2006) and question the exclusion to which it contributes in a political context.…”

“…Iron and iron technology formed the basis for industrialization, where industrial society finally, after a long time and through southern immigration (first of farmers and later of miners), made the Arctic part of the country 'civilized'. In relation to the grand industrial narrative of the region, the indigenous Sámi population of the area was often treated as a timeless 'Other' (Hagström Yamamoto 2010;Ojala 2009;Ojala & Ojala 2020). In recent publications (Karlsson & Magnusson 2020), iron production in terms of the establishment of the mining industry in the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries is still highlighted as the process creating preconditions for the building of societies in Scandinavia.…”