Modern DNA-technology has given a new picture on how Sweden was populated after the last ice age.
Mattias Jakobsson, genetic professor from the Uppsala University has worked in the so called Atlas-project which tries to map out the genomes of those people.
He believes that the first group of pioneers came from the south and started to live in the modern day Skåne and Bohuslän area somewhere around 11 000 years ago, following the retreating ice cap.
The hunters followed the reindeer herds which grazed on the tundra, while the smelting ice was retreating. In the beginning they did expeditions on summer time but as the climate became warmer even more families came to the area.
In Sweden there are no skeletal remains of the first immigrants, but near in Europe there are a handful of individual remains which have been analysed and which can be used to determinate what the DNA of the first Swedes looked like. (My note: on the OP I linked to Fancy Mancy's topic about the British case)
The pioneers learned quickly how to utilize the resources of the sea. Seals, dolphins and fish became soon their foremost hunted sea creatures. While the ice was smelting they began to go along the coast of Norway.
At the same time another stone age population group was traveling to the area from Northern Norway.
Archaeologists have long suspected that there moved a completely another people group because they have dug up new and better items and weapons from the time period. It's not clear when the first pioneers arrived.
New DNA-analysis confirms that there actually was a new people group who spread technology.
The new-comers had arrived as moose hunters from the modern day Russia, and from their genome it can be said they looked different than the first group of pioneers who arrived to Sweden.
– They had whiter skin, there were individuals who had blue eyes and individuals who had dark eyes, and same can be said about their hair color, the colors are from different spectre, says Mattias Jakobsson.
The new-comers didn't have only better weapons they even brought a completely new world-view and culture to Scandinavia.
Birgitte Skar is an artist from Norway's University of technology and natural sciences. She believes that the first images (drawn by the stone age people) comes from the east. It came with the people who came from modern day Russia who created the first stone carving in the Nordic countries.
They also made ritual items. Like a stone pickax which is not believed to have had any practical purpose.
– It was something completely new, we don't have this kind of symbol usage among the pioneers. We see a few elements of the culture, for example a situation where the people began to bury their dead relatives which died in the nature. This is a new phenomena which comes from this time, says Birgitte Skar.
Among the Norway's coast two people groups meet one another, they had taken different routes when they left Africa 80 000 years ago.
According to Birgitte Skar here is no proof that the two groups were hostile towards one another and genetic scientists believe that the eastern and western hunters actually waited for the ice to smelt together.
In the end of several hundreds years northern Europe got the most mixed population, geneticists claim.
It is from this time period when evolution made the people gradually turn more light-skinned. Mutations for light skin helped the stone-age population to build up vitally important D-vitamin - and to survive in the dark Nordic environment.
Result from their meeting can be seen in Bohuslän where is located the oldest somewhat whole skeleton in our country (Sweden) - the so called österödskvinnan - which was found in the beginning of the previous century. It can be raced back to 10 200 years before our time.
The finding is significant because of many things. Not the least because she must have been at leas 80 years old when she died.
Osteologist Torbjörn Ahlström has researched the skeleton and he believes that it possibly wasn't un-normal for people to reach that age on that time. If they had found good food and several infectious diseases didn't exist. People were living very simple lives so they couldn't spread diseases.
– If they survived the childhood they could have lived 80 years, he says.
(I don't have the motivation to translate the rest)