During the Stone Age the bodies were buried unburned, in a recumbent or sitting position. By the side of the dead body was usually placed a weapon, a tool, or some ornaments, sometimes also earthenware vessels, now filled only with earth. These vessels may once have contained food. The elaborate graves seem to indicate a belief in a future life. The food, if any such was placed by the side of the dead, would not necessarily point to the fact that such a future life was imagined merely as a continuation of earth life. The heathen Scandinavians of a later age believed that the dead remained for some time in their burial place before reaching their ultimate destination. For their possible wants during this intermediate state food was left with the dead body.
The total number of relics of stone found in Sweden is 64,000. Of these only 4,000 belong to Svealand and Norrland, while of all the rest found in Gothaland 45,000 belong to Scania alone.
In a much later age the Scandinavians were regarded as pure barbarians. For this reason it is important to observe that graves from the Stone Age show that the Swedes in that remote period had several domesticated animals, the dog, horse, ox, swine, sheep, and, perhaps, also the goat. Hence they were certainly a pastoral people, not living exclusively by hunting and fishing. But whether they practiced agriculture cannot be decided in the present state of our knowledge. The fact that the very oldest graves are found in the most fertile districts of Southern Sweden seems to speak in favor of the supposition that agriculture was known and appreciated.
Of metals, even of gold, the people of the late Stone Age were entirely ignorant, also of the art of writing. Hence no monuments of their language will ever be found. Still it is highly probable that the Teutonic ancestors of the Swedes began to settle in the land from the beginning of the Stone Age.
It is true that some skulls, very much like those of the Laps, have also been found in the graves of the Stone Age; but it must be borne in mind that these burial places, impressive through their size and the amount of work and mechanical skill necessary for their erection, can be believed to have been originally intended only for kings or chieftains, and their families. It was probably a custom, as in later heathen times, to bury with such distinguished people a number of slaves, dead or alive. The presence of skulls of a non-Scandinavian type can thus be explained, without the necessity of accepting the theory of an early mixture of two races.