It is not known what language the early Scandinavians of the Pitted Ware culture spoke, but new tribes—the Corded-Ware, or Battle-Axe culture, who many scholars think spoke Proto-Indo-European—overrun them towards the end of the third millennium BCE,

Many scholars associate Corded Ware culture with some of the Indo-European family of languages; some believe it to be related to the Catacomb culture, an early Bronze Age culture occupying what, essentially, is present-day Ukraine.

The people of the Corded Ware culture (Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture) may have introduced into Scandinavia the Indo-European (Germanic) language (ancestral to modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faeroese).

This new people, advancing up to Uppland and the Oslofjord, are cattle herders; with them, most of southern Scandinavia enters the Neolithic.