The arrival and advance of agriculture is debated but it seems at that time the success of the hunting, fishing and gathering culture employed by sedentary groups could have made the adoption of farming and herding appear unnecessary.
Coastal communities focused on marine resources (fish and seal), and inland communities focused on the hunting of both big (elk and reindeer) and small (beaver) game. Freshwater fishing was probably also important.
The Trichterrandbecherkultur (TRB/TBK), also known as the Funnelbeaker culture (FBC: 4300-2700 BC), developed as a merger of other cultures in north-central Europe and during the fourth millennium BC it expanded northwards, ranging from Denmark up to Uppsala County on the east coast of Sweden and the region around the Oslofjord (south of Oslo). Oats, barley, pigs, cattle, sheep and goats became common and spread as far north as Alta in Finnmark.
Rock art falls into two categories: petroglyphs carved into rock and pictographs painted on rock. In the northernmost part of Norway at the head of the Altajord, Alta municipality, Finnmark County, there are over six thousand rock carvings and paintings spread over forty-five different sites. At the largest locality, Jiepmaluokta about three miles west from Alta, the carvings date from around 4200 to 500 BC. The wide variety of imagery shows a hunter-gatherer culture that controlled herds of reindeer, was adept at boat building and fishing, and practised shamanistic rituals involving bear worship and other venerated animals.
For the next thousand years or so people chiselled pictures of animals and ships on the local rocks, particularly at Slettnes and Altafjord in Troms og Finnmark. The animals include bears, reindeers, elk and dogs; the ships appear to be made of bone and wood frameworks covered by hides.
The Pitted Ware culture (3500-2300 BC) emerged in east-central Sweden around 3500 BC and gradually replaced the Funnelbeaker culture throughout the coastal areas of southern Scandinavia. Its people were mainly maritime hunters, and engaged in trade with both the agricultural communities of the Scandinavian interior and other hunter-gatherers.
Three dolmens (single-chamber burial structures) have been identified along the Oslofjord in southeast Norway; one at Rødtangen on the Hurum peninsula, and a third (charcoal dated to 3000 BC) in Skjeltorp near Sarpsborg in Østfold.
The first farmers grew crops by slash and burn, i.e., they cut down and burned part of the forest to fertilise the soil with ash, and then raised crops on the land until the soil was exhausted after a few years, at which time they repeated the process in another part of the forest.
The Battle Axe culture (2800-2300 BC) – an offshoot of the Corded Ware culture (2930-2300 BC) occupying an area between the Rhine (west) to the Volga (east) – emerged in southern Scandinavia 2800 BC bringing languages and other elements of the Indo-European culture to the region. It replaced the Funnelbeaker culture and coexisted with the Pitted Ware culture for a while before absorbing it. The fusion of the Battle Axe culture with the native agricultural and hunter-gatherer cultures produced the Nordic Bronze Age,
The Sámi settled in Scandinavia perhaps by some estimates as far back as 4000 years ago, migrating from the east to northern Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway.
Greenstone (igneous rock) from a quarry at Hespriholmen, Bømlo municipality, Vestland, and diabase (subvolcanic rock) from a quarry at Stakaneset, Tysnes, Vestland, were used throughout the Mesolithic and early Neolithic to make stone axes and adzes. Greenstone artefacts are found in the southern part of western Norway and diabase artefacts in the northern portion with no discernable disruption in their distribution until the major farming expansion during the Late Neolithic together with the large-scale import of flint axes from Jutland.
During the Late Neolithic (2350-1700 BC) agriculture and animal husbandry were well established along the Norwegian west coast up to the Trøndelag area and there have been finds of coastal settlements.
Burials often included smaller barrows or cairns, generally associated with inhumation burials but changing to cremation in the Early Bronze Age (1700-1100 BC) before cremation became the norm in the Late Bronze Age (1100-500 BC).
Neolithic Monuments
Sweden’s Neolithic monuments can be divided into four groups: Portal tombs/dolmens (burial chambers), passage graves, cist graves, and causewayed enclosures. Dolmens and passage graves usually (and cists sometimes) were buried under mounds of earth and stone. Dolmen burial mounds can be round (round dolmens) or rectangular (long dolmens). In passage tombs the burial chamber is connected by a narrow passage to the exterior of the mound. Cists are small stone-built boxes to hold the bodies of the dead. Causewayed enclosures are sub-circular areas encircled by one or more concentric ditches with banks on their inner sides.
| Döserygg dolmens, Vellinge Municipality | Skåne | 4000 |
| Haga round dolmen, Orust (I), Orust M | Västra Götaland | 3500 |
| Luttra passage grave, Falköping Municipality | 3500 | |
| Mysinge passage grave, Öland (I), Mörbylånga | Kalmar | 3500 |
| Gillhög passage grave, Kävlinge Municipality | Skåne | 3300 |
| Trollasten round dolmen, Ystad Municipality | 3300 | |
| Hindby Mosse long dolmen, Malmö M | 3200 | |
| Karleby passage graves, Falköping M | Västra Götaland | 3200 |
| Ekornavallen passage grave, Falköping M | 3000 | |
| Vårkumla passage graves. Falköping M | 3000 | |
| Ramshög passage grave, Ystad Municipality | Skåne | 2590 |
| Erkedösen passage grave, Trelleborg M | 2500 | |
| Skegrie long dolmen, Trelleborg Municipality | 2500 | |
| Hyllie farms, Malmö Municipality | 2400 | |
| Fosie IV houses, Malmö Municipality | 2290 | |
| Pile metal hoard, Malmö Municipality | 2000 |
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