One of the most important discoveries of this period was the art of writing, which the inhabitants of the North seem to have acquired soon after the beginning of the Christian era. The earliest alphabetic symbols in Sweden, and the only ones used there during the whole of heathen times, were _runes_. These were probably invented a little before the Christian era by a South Teutonic tribe, in imitation of the Roman writing which the Teutons received from one of the Celtic tribes living just to the north of the Alps. The Roman characters were adapted for the use of inscriptions in stone and wood, the curves being changed into straight lines. The Runic characters, in use among all Teutonic tribes, were twenty-four in number; these older runes were, by the Scandinavians, later simplified and reduced to sixteen. There is a number of inscriptions in older runes in Sweden, dating from about 300 to 500 A.D. They are found chiefly on stones and gold bracteates, also in England, France, Germany, Wallachia and the west of Russia. All belong to about the same date, and are of Teutonic origin. The early Runic inscriptions do not contain any accounts of historically known persons or events. Yet they are of the greatest historical importance, for they show that during the Earlier Iron Age, in the fourth and fifth centuries, the language of Sweden, and consequently also the people, were Teutonic. These inscriptions in Sweden and neighboring countries give samples of the earliest known form of the Northern language, which is considerably different from its descendants, the Old Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic, but very much resembling the language spoken by the Goths on the Danube during the same period.
The Later Iron Age commences with the fifth century and stretches to the beginning of the eighth century A.D. When Italy had been overrun by the “barbarians,” the centre of the old civilization shifted to Byzantium, and there are many traces of an active intercourse with the capital of the Byzantine rule in the finds made in Swedish soil. Most of these finds consist of gold coins of the fifth century, the majority of them having been found in the islands of Œland and Gothland. The stream of gold coming from Byzantium must have been quite considerable, having its source in the tribute which many of the Byzantine emperors had to pay to the Goths on the Danube. They are the very same emperors whose names appear on the coins found in Sweden. The great number of costly and beautiful ornaments of gold found in Sweden, and dating from this period, must have been made out of Roman and Byzantine coins, melted down. One of the largest hoards of gold ever found in Europe was discovered in the Swedish province of Sœdermanland. Its weight was twenty-seven pounds, and it contained several ornaments of consummate workmanship.