Sledges and Wheeled Vehicles: Ethnological Studies from the View-Point of Sweden

’The object of this work, ’ says its author, ’is to investigate certain problems connected with the history of vehicular transport from a Swedish point of view’ but, though he is thus an avowed specialist, he never loses sight of the two facts, that Swedish transport is part of the world’s transport, and that vehicles are historically important because they are an essential part of the culture of their users. He is to be congratulated on treating studies of vehicles as the ethnological studies that they certainly are. Besides dealing very fully with what may be called the ’normal’; stages of slide-car, sledges, wheeled-sledge, car, and wagons, he produces evidence of a pre-sledge era of single runners dating back to Neolithic times. The vast wealth of evidence accumulated in this book forms in itself a permanent and valuable contribution to the literature of the subject. The plates provide nearly a hundred good photographs and reproductions. There is no doubt that this book will be of great value to anyone seriously interested in the history of transport.