The European Bronze Age is characterized by bronze artifacts and the use of bronze implements. The regional Bronze Age succeeds the Neolithic. It starts with the Aegean Bronze Age in 3200 BC (succeeded by the Beaker culture), and spans the entire 2nd millennium BC (Unetice culture, Urnfield culture, Tumulus culture, Terramare culture, and Lusatian culture) in Northern Europe, lasting until ca. 600 BC.

The Aegean Bronze Age begins around 3200 BC when civilizations first established a far-ranging trade network. This network imported tin and charcoal to Cyprus, where copper was mined and alloyed with the tin to produce bronze. Bronze objects were then exported far and wide, and supported the trade. Isotopic analysis of the tin in some Mediterranean bronze objects indicates it came from as far away as Great Britain.^{[citation needed]}

Knowledge of navigation was well developed at this time, and reached a peak of skill not exceeded until a method was discovered (or perhaps rediscovered) to determine longitude around AD 1750, with the notable exception of the Polynesian sailors.

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age. The term Stone Age implies the inability to smelt any ore, the term Bronze Age implies the inability to smelt iron ore and the term Iron Age implies the ability to manufacture artifacts in any of the three types of hard material. Their arrangement in the archaeological chronology reflects the difficulty of manufacture in the history of technology.

During the past few centuries of detailed, scientific study of the Bronze Age, it has become clear that on the whole, the use of copper or bronze was only the most stable and therefore the most diagnostic part of a cluster of features marking the period. In addition to the creation of bronze from raw materials and the widespread use of bronze tools and weapons, the period continued development of pictogramic or ideogramic symbols and proto-writing, and other features of urban civilization.

The Nordic Bronze Age (also Northern Bronze Age) is the name given by Oscar Montelius to a period and a Bronze Age culture in Scandinavian pre-history, c. 1700-500 BC, with sites that reached as far east as Estonia. Succeeding the Late Neolithic culture, its ethnic and linguistic affinities are unknown in the absence of written sources. It is followed by the Pre-Roman Iron Age.

Even though Scandinavians joined the European Bronze Age cultures fairly late through trade, Scandinavian sites present rich and well-preserved objects made of wool, wood and imported Central European bronze and gold.

Many rock carvings depict ships, and the large stone burial monuments known as stone ships suggest that shipping played an important role. Thousands of rock carvings depict ships, most probably representing sewn plank built canoes for warfare, fishing and trade. These may have a history as far back as the neolithic period and continue in to the Pre-Roman Iron Age, as shown by the Hjortspring boat.

There are many mounds and rock carving sites from the period. Numerous artifacts of bronze and gold are found. No written language existed in the Nordic countries during the Bronze Age. The rock carvings have been dated through comparison with depicted artifacts, for example bronze axes and swords. (There are also numerous Nordic Stone Age rock carvings in the north of Scandinavia, mostly portraying elk.)

Kristian Kristiansen (16 November 1909 – 14 July 1980) was a Norwegian novelist, playwright, writer of short stories, and children's writer.

He was born in Tromsø as the son of carpenter Ingbert Kristiansen (1881–1968) and Ingeborg Haugen (1886–1976). The family moved to Trøndelag when Kristian was nine years old. After middle school he held several different jobs. Starting in 1936, he published a large number of short stories in the magazine Arbeidermagasinet. In the late 1930s he published two short plays, Det dages (1937) and Medaljen (1938), and the children's book Eggtjuver i fugleberget (Egg thieves at the nesting cliff, 1938). His first novel, Vi bærer et bilde, came in 1939. His youth's book Jeg er ingen spion! (I am no spy!) from 1940 is one of the very few books published in Norway throughout the Second World War where it is told from the unoccupied parts of the country during the battles in 1940.

During the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany, which started in 1940, Kristian became involved in resistance work. In 1942 he had to flee to Sweden. There he met the physician Ellen Hedlund; their subsequent marriage lasted from 1943 until 1955. In 1959 he married architect Turid Ellefsen.

Jacob Bronowski (18 January 1908 – 22 August 1974) was a Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor. He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man, and the accompanying book.

Jacob Bronowski was born in Łódź, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, in 1908. His family moved to Germany during the First World War, and then to England in 1920. Although, according to Bronowski, he knew only two English words on arriving in Great Britain, he gained admission to the Central Foundation Boys' School in London and went on to study at the University of Cambridge and graduated as the senior wrangler.

As a mathematics student at Jesus College, Cambridge, Bronowski co-edited—with William Empson—the literary periodical Experiment, which first appeared in 1928. Bronowski would pursue this sort of dual activity, in both the mathematical and literary worlds, throughout his professional life. He was also a strong chess player, earning a half-blue while at Cambridge and composing numerous chess problems for the British Chess Magazine between 1926 and 1970. He received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1935, writing a dissertation in algebraic geometry. For a time in the 1930s he lived near Laura Riding and Robert Graves in Majorca. From 1934 to 1942 he taught mathematics at the University College of Hull. Beginning in this period, the British secret service MI5 kept Bronowski under surveillance believing he was a security risk, which is thought to have restricted his access to senior posts in the UK.