SWEDEN : History

A land of ancient bedrock,   Sweden was inhabited by hunters and gatherers during the Stone Age (6000 BC 4000 BC), following the recession of the last ice age the Weichsel glaciation. Sweden was first mentioned in the 1st century, by Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote that the Suiones lived out in the sea and were powerful in both arms and ships. During the Viking Age of the 9th and 10th century, these Swedes mainly travelled east, to the Balticum, Russia and the Black Sea and down to southern Europe.

Sweden gradually became a unified Christian kingdom during the 11th and 12th centuries . Its expansion into the northern wilderness of Lapland, the Scandinavian peninsula, and present-day Finland continued. The country today known as Finland was a part of Sweden from 1362 until 1809 . In 1397, Queen Margaret of Denmark united all the Nordic lands in the "Kalmar Union". Continual tension within the countries and within the union gradually led to an open conflict between the Swedes and the Danes in the 15th century. The union's final disintegration in the early 16th century brought on a long-lived rivalry between Norway and Denmark on one side and Sweden and Finland on the other. King Gustav I of Sweden (Vasa) ultimately broke free in 1521 and established a nation state, considered the Foundation of modern Sweden , and shortly thereafter carrying through a Protestant Reformation.

The 17th century saw the rise of Sweden as one of the great powers in Europe, due to successful participation, initiated by King Gustav II Adolph, in the Thirty Years' War. By 1658, Sweden ruled several provinces of Denmark as well as what is now Finland , Ingermanland (in which St. Petersburg is located), Estonia , Latvia , and important coastal towns and other areas of northern Germany .

Mighty as it was, it crumbled in the 18th century with Imperial Russia taking the reins of northern Europe in the Great Northern War, Russia, Saxony-Poland, and Denmark-Norway pooled their power in 1700 and attacked the Swedish-Finnish empire. Although the young Swedish King Karl XII (also known as Charles XII) won spectacular victories in the early years of the Great Northern War, his plan to attack Moscow and force Russia into peace proved too ambitious; he fell in battle in 1718. In the subsequent peace treaties, the allied powers, joined by Prussia and England-Hanover, ended Sweden 's reign as a great power. Sweden suffered further territorial losses during the Napoleonic wars and was forced to cede Finland to Russia in 1809.

The Campaign against Norway, 1814, led to the Treaty of Kiel, whereby Norway was forced into a union with Sweden that wasn't dissolved until 1905. But the campaign also signified the last of the Swedish wars and its 200 years of peace are arguably unique in the world today.

During the 1800's, Sweden knew a significant population increase, generally attributed to the three factors of peace, vaccination and potatoes, doubling the population from 1750 to 1850. Many people on the countryside, the home for the majority, found themselves out of work, leading to poverty and alcoholism. Therefore a massive emigration to mainly the United States occurred 18501910. However, as the Industrial revolution in Sweden progressed during the century, people gradually began moving into the Swedish cities and factory work, where they organized in Socialistic unions. A threatening Socialist revolution was avoided in 1917, following the re-introduction of Parliamentarism, and the country was democratized.

During and after World War I, in which Sweden remained neutral, the country benefited from the worldwide demand for Swedish steel, ball bearings, wood pulp, and matches. Postwar prosperity provided the foundations for the social welfare policies characteristic of modern Sweden . Foreign policy concerns in the 1930s centered on Soviet and German expansionism, which stimulated abortive efforts at Nordic defense cooperation. Sweden followed a policy of armed neutrality during World War II and currently remains nonaligned. Sweden became a member of the European Union in 1995.