Northern Europe: 08 SWEDEN (Scandinavia), Roman Period (09-400)

Although the Romans never directly controlled Scandinavia after the Roman expansion into northern Europe ended at the Rhine after the Battles of Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, a ‘Roman period’ is included in Scandinavian history because significant trade and cultural contact between the Roman world and the Germanic tribes inhabiting the region had notable influences on Scandinavian society, including the design of tools and ornaments, the development of the runic alphabet based on Roman letters and adoption of Roman-inspired customs and practices in areas like timekeeping and weights and measures.

Roman silver coins, known as denarii dated to this period, have in Sweden and the other northern countries. In Sweden, some 8000 pieces have been unearthed in modern times, most of them, about 7000, from the island of Gotland. Increased contact with the Romans was marked by a large import of Roman goods, including weapons, glass, and metal vessels.

Besides coinage, Roman artefacts also found in Sweden include glass beakers, bronze vessels, iron swords and iron axes. More profuse are native items although even these show the unmistakable influence of the Roman world. Included are anvils, planes and files. Scissors, unknown until this period, make their appearance.

During this period, farms were characterized by isolated, large longhouses that housed a whole extended family and their animals during colder winters under one roof. 

The runic script was developed in the second century, and the brief inscriptions that remain demonstrate that the people of south Scandinavia then spoke Proto-Norse, a language ancestral to modern Swedish. There are a number of older runic inscriptions in Sweden, dated c.300-500 AD.

Torsburgen hillfort, Gotland Municipality, Gotland County, is located on a limestone plateau. It is the largest hillfort on the island, with a circumference of about five kilometres. The northern edge of the plateau is a steep cliff but its southern edge is less steep and has a limestone wall six and a half metres high built along two kilometres of it. The hillfort was constructed in the Roman period and repeatedly rebuilt until the tenth century.Written sources begin to mention Scandinavia. Pliny the Elder (23/24–79) in his Historia Naturalis says that the Romans had rounded the Cimbric peninsula (Jutland) and that there was an island far to the north, Tacitus (c.56-c.120) in his Germania (98) uses the name Suiones to refer to the Swedish people, and Jordanes in his Getica (550) names two tribes the Suehans and the Suetidi in Scandza.