Besides swords and axes of beautiful workmanship, fishhooks, sickles and the different parts of harness have been found; also vessels of gold or bronze, evidently used for temple service. The Swedes of the Bronze Age were not acquainted with the art of forging the heated metal, but they possessed much technical skill in the art of casting. When the implement was taken out of the mold it was dipped in cold water, and very often the surface was ornamented by means of punches made of bronze. Their good taste was as highly developed as their skill. That the work was done in the North is proven by numerous finds of the very molds in which weapons and agricultural implements were cast. During the Stone Age only Gothaland and parts of Svealand were inhabited. The finds of the Bronze Age prove that the limits of the population were about the same during this period. The southern provinces continued to be the more thickly settled. Twenty times as many finds have been made in the soil of Scania as in the rest of the country. Norrland was hardly settled to any extent until the Iron Age, and has offered comparatively few finds from the Bronze Age, the total of which for the whole of Sweden amounts to about 4,000. _The Iron Age_ followed upon the Bronze Age. It lasts to this very day, we ourselves still living in the Iron Age; but the term is generally applied to that part of the period which commences with the close of the Bronze Age, and ends with the fall of heathendom. During the Iron Age, the Swedes first became acquainted with iron, silver, brass, lead, glass, stamped coins from foreign lands, and learned how to solder and gild metal. Archæologists have divided the period into two main parts, the Earlier and the Later Iron Age, both with subdivisions. The Earlier Iron Age includes the time from the fifth century B.C. to about the beginning of the fifth century A.D. The first half of the Earlier Iron Age is characterized by swords with both blades and sheaths made of iron, thin crescent-shaped knives, brooches of iron, collars, and decorative plates overlaid with bronze. The graves resemble those from the end of the Bronze Age, containing burned bones in urns, or laid together in a heap. This circumstance makes it more than probable that the first introduction of iron in the North was not connected with any immigration of a new people. The finds of the earliest Iron Age are not very rich, but they prove that the people who have left them behind had been subjected to a very strong influence from the Gallic tribes living close to the south of the Teutonic area of population. Then came the second half of the Earlier Iron Age, characterized by a strong Roman influence. It commences with the extension of the Roman empire toward the North, about the beginning of the Christian era, and winds up with the beginning of the fifth century, when Teutonic migrations and invasions put an end to the power of Rome. In the hostile or friendly