1.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
2.
Nymphaeaceae
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Nymphaeaceae /ˌnɪmfiːˈeɪsiː/ is a family of flowering plants, commonly called water lilies. They live as rhizomatous aquatic herbs in temperate and tropical climates around the world, the family contains five genera with about 70 known species. Water lilies are rooted in soil in bodies of water, with leaves, the leaves are round, with a radial notch in Nymphaea and Nuphar, but fully circular in Victoria and Euryale. Genera with more parts, Nuphar, Nymphaea, Victoria, have a beetle pollination syndrome, while genera with fewer parts are pollinated by flies or bees. Thus, the number of relatively unspecialized floral organs in the Nymphaeaceae is not an ancestral condition for the clade. Water lilies do not have leaves in the winter time. The leftover of internal pressure is embodied by the constant streams of bubbles that outbreak when rising leaves are ruptured in the spring. Methane is still penetrating the roots and rhizome in the summer, moving fast up the petioles, the Nymphaeaceae are aquatic, rhizomatous herbs. The family is characterized by scattered vascular bundles in the stems. Hairs are simple, usually producing mucilage, stipules are either present or absent. Flowers are solitary, bisexual, radial, with a pedicel and usually floating or raised above the surface of the water. Sepals are 4-12, distinct to connate, imbricate, and often petal-like, petals lacks or 8 to numerous, inconspicuous to showy, often intergrading with stamens. Stamens are 3 to numerous, the innermost sometimes represented by staminodes, carpels are 3 to numerous, distinct or connate. Fruit is an aggregate of nuts, a berry, or an irregularly dehiscent fleshy capsule, seeds are often arillate, more or less lacking sperm. Nymphaeaceae has been investigated systematically for decades because botanists considered their floral morphology to represent one of the earliest groups of angiosperms, modern genetic analyses by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group researchers has confirmed its basal position among flowering plants. In addition, the Nymphaeaceae are more diverse and geographically dispersed than other basal angiosperms. Nymphaeaceae is placed in the order Nymphaeales, which is the second diverging group of angiosperms after Amborella in the most widely accepted flowering plant classification system, Nymphaeaceae is a small family of three to six genera, Barclaya, Euryale, Nuphar, Nymphaea, Ondinea, and Victoria. The genus Barclaya is sometimes given rank as its own family, Barclayaceae, on the basis of a perianth tube arising from the top of the ovary
3.
Osprey
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The osprey —also called fish eagle, sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk—is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a raptor, reaching more than 60 cm in length and 180 cm across the wings. It is brown on the upperparts and predominantly greyish on the head, the osprey tolerates a wide variety of habitats, nesting in any location near a body of water providing an adequate food supply. It is found on all continents except Antarctica, although in South America it occurs only as a non-breeding migrant, as its other common names suggest, the ospreys diet consists almost exclusively of fish. It possesses specialised physical characteristics and exhibits unique behaviour to assist in hunting and catching prey, as a result of these unique characteristics, it has been given its own taxonomic genus, Pandion and family, Pandionidae. Four subspecies are recognized, one of which has recently been given full species status. Despite its propensity to nest near water, the osprey is not classed as a sea eagle, the osprey was one of the many species described by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th-century work, Systema Naturae, and named as Falco haliaeetus. The genus, Pandion, is the member of the family Pandionidae, and used to contain only one species. The genus Pandion was described by the French zoologist Marie Jules César Savigny in 1809, the osprey differs in several respects from other diurnal birds of prey. Its toes are of length, its tarsi are reticulate. The osprey and owls are the only raptors whose outer toe is reversible and this is particularly helpful when they grab slippery fish. The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy has placed it together with the diurnal raptors in a greatly enlarged Ciconiiformes. The osprey is unusual in that it is a living species that occurs nearly worldwide. Even the few subspecies are not unequivocally separable, there are four generally recognised subspecies, although differences are small, and ITIS lists only the first two. P. h. carolinensis –, North America and this form is larger, darker bodied and has a paler breast than nominate haliaetus. P. h. ridgwayi – Maynard,1887, Caribbean islands and this form has a very pale head and breast compared with nominate haliaetus, with only a weak eye mask. Its scientific name commemorates American ornithologist Robert Ridgway, P. h. cristatus –, coastline and some large rivers of Australia and Tasmania. The smallest and most distinctive subspecies, also non-migratory, recently, P. h. cristatus has been given full species status as eastern osprey
4.
Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time
5.
Tyresta National Park
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Tyresta National Park is a national park with a surrounding nature reserve in Sweden, located in Haninge and Tyresö municipalities in Stockholm County. About 20 km from central Stockholm are the Tyresta National Park, the area is characterised by a rift valley landscape which is typical for central Sweden but unique in an international perspective. The national park has an area of 19.7 km2, and it has been protected to preserve its noted natural values, e. g. one of the largest sections of untouched forest in southern Sweden, and to safeguard its importance for recreation. The park also has deciduous forests, open arable land. A typical feature of primeval forest is the number of plant. Up to 8.000 species of animals can be found here which is four times as many as in managed forests, many species are also completely dependent on primeval forest as their habitats and can not survive under other conditions. In August 1999, about 10% of the park area was consumed in a large fire. Although the cause of the remains unknown, the hot. Swedens National Parks, Tyresta National Park from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency Tyresta National Park and Nature Reserve
6.
Stone Age
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The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking, bone tools were used during this period as well but are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. The Stone Age is further subdivided by the types of tools in use. According to the age and location of the current evidence, the cradle of the genus is the East African Rift System, especially toward the north in Ethiopia, where it is bordered by grasslands. The closest relative among the living primates, the genus Pan, represents a branch that continued on in the deep forest. The rift served as a conduit for movement into southern Africa and also north down the Nile into North Africa and through the continuation of the rift in the Levant to the vast grasslands of Asia. The oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks, the oldest stone tools were excavated from the site of Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana, northwestern Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years old. Prior to the discovery of these Lomekwian tools, the oldest known stone tools had been found at sites at Gona, Ethiopia, on the sediments of the paleo-Awash River. All the tools come from the Busidama Formation, which lies above a disconformity, or missing layer, the oldest sites containing tools are dated to 2. 6–2.55 mya. One of the most striking circumstances about these sites is that they are from the Late Pliocene, excavators at the locality point out that. the earliest stone tool makers were skilled flintknappers. The possible reasons behind this seeming abrupt transition from the absence of tools to the presence thereof include. The species who made the Pliocene tools remains unknown, fragments of Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus and Homo, possibly Homo habilis, have been found in sites near the age of the Gona tools. Innovation of the technique of smelting ore ended the Stone Age, the first most significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, each of which was smelted separately. The Chalcolithic by convention is the period of the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age, the transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia. Note the Rudna Glava mine in Serbia, Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy from about 3300 BCE carried with him a copper axe and a flint knife. In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the Stone Age was followed directly by the Iron Age, the Middle East and southeastern Asian regions progressed past Stone Age technology around 6000 BCE. Europe, and the rest of Asia became post–Stone Age societies by about 4000 BCE, the proto-Inca cultures of South America continued at a Stone Age level until around 2000 BCE, when gold, copper and silver made their entrance
7.
Neolithic
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It ended when metal tools became widespread. The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant about 10, 200–8800 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, and the so-called proto-Neolithic is now included in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic between 10,200 and 8800 BC. By 10, 200–8800 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep. By about 6900–6400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order, the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture, unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species reached the Neolithic. The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νέος néos, new and λίθος líthos, stone, the term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC, early development occurred in the Levant and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards, the Neolithic 1 period began roughly 10,000 years ago in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated around 9500 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres, contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Jericho, Israel, Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming, in the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour, emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated
8.
Viking Age
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The Viking Age is the period from the late 8th century to the mid-11th century in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, following the Germanic Iron Age. It is the period of history when Scandinavian Norsemen explored Europe by its seas and rivers for trade, raids, colonisation and conquest. Three Viking ships had beached in Weymouth Bay four years earlier, the Viking devastation of Northumbrias Holy Island was reported by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York, who wrote, Never before in Britain has such a terror appeared. Vikings were portrayed as violent and bloodthirsty by their enemies. The chronicles of medieval England portrayed them as rapacious wolves among sheep, the first challenges to the many anti-Viking images in Britain emerged in the 17th century. Pioneering scholarly works on the Viking Age reached a readership in Britain. Archaeologists began to dig up Britains Viking past, linguistics traced the Viking-Age origins of rural idioms and proverbs. New dictionaries of the Old Norse language enabled more Victorians to read the Icelandic Sagas, the Vikings who invaded western and eastern Europe were chiefly pagans from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They also settled in the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Iceland, peripheral Scotland, Greenland and their North Germanic language, Old Norse, became the mother-tongue of present-day Scandinavian languages. By 801, a central authority appears to have been established in Jutland. In Norway, mountainous terrain and fjords formed strong natural boundaries, communities there remained independent of each other, unlike the situation in Denmark which is lowland. By 800, some 30 small kingdoms existed in Norway, the sea was the easiest way of communication between the Norwegian kingdoms and the outside world. It was in the 8th century that Scandinavians began to build ships of war, the North Sea rovers were traders, colonisers and explorers as well as plunderers. There are various theories concerning the causes of the Viking invasions, for people living along the coast, it would seem natural to seek new land by the sea. Another reason was that during this period England, Wales and Ireland, the Franks, however, had well-defended coasts and heavily fortified ports and harbours. Pure thirst for adventure may also have been a factor, a reason for the raids is believed by some to be over-population caused by technological advances, such as the use of iron, or a shortage of women due to selective female infanticide. Although another cause could well have been caused by the Frankish expansion to the south of Scandinavia. Consequently, these Vikings became raiders, in search of subsistence, There is ongoing debate among scholars as to why the Scandinavians began to expand during the 8th through 11th centuries
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Runestone
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A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, most runestones are located in Scandinavia, but there are also scattered runestones in locations that were visited by Norsemen during the Viking Age. Runestones are often memorials to dead men, Runestones were usually brightly coloured when erected, though this is no longer evident as the colour has worn off. The tradition of raising stones that had runic inscriptions first appeared in the 4th and 5th century, in Norway and Sweden, the earliest Danish runestones appeared in the 8th and 9th centuries, and there are about 50 runestones from the Migration Period in Scandinavia. Most runestones were erected during the period 950-1100 CE, and then they were raised in Sweden. —The Ynglinga saga What may have increased the spread of runestones was an event in Denmark in the 960s, King Harald Bluetooth had just been baptised and in order to mark the arrival of a new order and a new age, he commanded the construction of a runestone. The runestone has three sides of two are decorated with images. On one side, there is an animal that is the prototype of the animals that would be commonly engraved on runestones. Shortly after this stone had been made, something happened in Scandinavias runic tradition, scores of chieftains and powerful Norse clans consciously tried to imitate King Harald, and from Denmark a runestone wave spread northwards through Sweden. In most districts, the fad died out after a generation, but, in the central Swedish provinces of Uppland and Södermanland, there are about 3,000 runestones among the about 6,000 runic inscriptions in Scandinavia. The runestones are unevenly distributed in Scandinavia, Denmark has 250 runestones, Sweden has as many as between 1,700 and 2,500 depending on definition. The Swedish district of Uppland has the highest concentration with as many as 1,196 inscriptions in stone, outside of Scandinavia, the Isle of Man stands out with its 30 runestones from the 9th century and early 11th century. Scattered runestones have also found in England, Ireland, Scotland. Runestones were placed on selected spots in the landscape, such as locations, roads, bridge constructions. In medieval churches, there are often runestones that have been inserted as construction material, in southern Scania, runestones can be tied to large estates that also had churches constructed on their land. In the Mälaren Valley, the appear to be placed so that they mark essential parts of the domains of an estate, such as courtyard, grave field. Runestones usually appear as single monuments and more rarely as pairs, in some cases, they are part of larger monuments together with other raised stones. However, although scholars know where 95% of all runestones were discovered, the remainder have been found in churches, roads, bridges, graves, farms, and water routes
