Sweden's prehistory begins in the Allerd oscillation, a warm period around 12,000 BC, with

Late Palaeolithic reindeer-hunting camps of theBromme culture at the edge of the ice in what is now
the country's southernmost province, Scania. This period was characterised by small bands
of hunter-gatherer-fishers using flint technology.
Sweden enters proto-history with the Germania of Tacitus in AD 98. In Germania 44 and 45 he
mentions the Swedes (Suiones) as a powerful tribe (distinguished not merely for their arms and
men, but for their powerful fleets) with ships that had a prow at each end (longships). Which kings
(kuningaz) ruled these Suiones is unknown, but Norse mythology presents a long line of legendary
and semi-legendary kings going back to the last centuries BC. As for literacy in Sweden itself,
the runic script was in use among the south Scandinavian elite by at least the 2nd century AD, but all
that has come down to the present from the Roman Period is curt inscriptions on artefacts, mainly of
male names, demonstrating that the people of south Scandinavia spoke Proto-Norse at the time, a
language ancestral to Swedish and other North Germanic languages.
In the 6th century Jordanes named two tribes he calls the Suehans and the Suetidi who lived
in Scandza. These two names are both considered to refer to the same tribe. The Suehans, he says,
have very fine horses just as the Thyringi tribe (alia vero gens ibi moratur Suehans, quae velud
Thyringi equis utuntur eximiis). Snorri Sturluson wrote that the contemporary Swedish
king Adils (Eadgils) had the finest horses of his day. The Suehans were the suppliers of black fox
skins for the Roman market. Then Jordanes names the Suetidi which is considered to be the Latin
form of Svitjod. He writes that the Suetidi are the tallest of men together with the Dani who were of
the same stock. Later he mentions other Scandinavian tribes for being of the same height.