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SWEDISH HISTORY

Eight books that tell hidden stories from Sweden’s history

From a Swedish codebreaker to a colony of conscientious objectors in Sweden, and quite a bit in between, these are not your average history books.

Published: 5 April 2019 07:00 CEST
Updated: 19 September 2020 10:42 CEST

Eight books that tell hidden stories from Sweden's history

Learn about lesser known chapters of Swedish history with these eight fascinating books (in English). Photo: Radu Marcusu/Unsplash

Beyond lengthy tomes about great leaders, epic battles, eras and epochs, and so forth, there are countless excellent and unexpected non-fiction books that offer insight into Swedish history. Here are eight books that have either been written in or translated into English that even the most history-shy reader could enjoy.

1. The world of Cajsa Andersdotter: A close-up view of Sweden in the 18th and 19th century, by Bengt Hällgren, published 2017

Big publishing houses tend to publish “sexy” books that appeal to the masses. This doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for books like The World of Cajsa Andersdotter, which details the lives and fates of several generations of a poor Swedish family from 1760 to 1910. Independently published, the book seems to fly under the radar to some extent, but customer reviews are unanimous in praise of Brent Hällgren’s research and writing.

While many history books focus on the great and the good, Hällgren’s book is a stark reminder of what life was like for the average Swede. In the preface, Hällgren writes that the book “illustrates how poverty, starvation, disease, and helplessness dominated the life of ordinary people”. Naturally, the book is especially popular with individuals seeking to get a better sense of what life was like for their Swedish ancestors.

Welcome to The Local Sweden's Book Club — Stockholm’s City Library. File photo: Jann Lipka/imagebank.sweden.se

2. Culture Unbound: Americanization and Everyday Life in Sweden, by Tom O’Dell, published 1997

While the introduction to Culture Unbound begins with the cliché, “Sweden is the most Americanized country in the world”, the book presents an informed and nuanced evaluation of the reality behind this notion. Despite leaning to the scholarly side, the book is still a readable examination of the perceptions and realities of “Americanization” in Sweden, beginning in the mid-18th century.

Each chapter considers a different theme, including – of course – Sweden’s era of mass emigration, during which the country lost 20 percent of its population, and how it shaped ideas of both Sweden and United States. Another chapter focuses on how American cars in Sweden “from the Swedish upper classes in the twenties to the working classes in the fifties and sixties” illuminates “the history of class distinctions, aesthetic values, and social contestations in the Swedish context…”.

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3. With the Lapps in the High Mountains: A Woman among the Sami, 1907–1908, by Emilie Demant Hatt, published 2013 (originally published in Sami and Danish in 1913)

Traditionally a nomadic people whose livelihood depended on reindeer, the Sami have been living in the Arctic areas of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Russia for thousands of years. Though they and their unique and important culture are now recognized by governments and ethnologists, this hasn’t always been the case. When Danish artist and writer Emilie Demant Hatt wrote about her year living among the Sami in Swedish Lapland in the early 20th century, she articulated the oppression they had long endured.

“From ancient times down to quite recently he’s been an object of taxation; no one was his friend, no one advised or helped when he was squeezed”, she writes. “The priests wiped out his old religion in a hard and unsympathetic manner. The authorities pressed him for taxes; the government made laws and regulations that restricted his freedom. The farmers fleeced him and killed him and his reindeer.”

But while grim realities are evident in the book, it is more a celebration of the history and culture of the Sami people, as well as of the beauty of Swedish Lapland, as experienced by the author more than a century ago.

OPINION: ‘Why is what happened to the Sami in Sweden not common knowledge?’

4. Codebreakers: Arne Beurling and the Swedish Crypto Program During World War II, by Bengt Beckman, published 2002 (originally published in Swedish in 1996)

Britain’s code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, which at its height consisted of around 10,000 personnel, has been the subject of numerous books, films and television series. By comparison, scant attention has been paid to Arne Beurling, a Swedish mathematician who in 1940 deciphered the code of the German Geheimschreiber (G-Schreiber) communications device, by himself and using only pencil and paper, in just two weeks.

“With the cracking of the German code, Swedish military intelligence suddenly had access to German plans at the highest level of security clearance”, the foreword to Codebreakers explains. “The most stunning pieces of information decoded by Sweden were plans for Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union”.

Written by Bengt Beckman, who was also a mathematician and a member of Swedish intelligence, the book is a fascinating look at Beurling, his incredible accomplishment, and the impact it had on the war.

5. War Diaries, 1939–1945, by Astrid Lindgren, published 2016 (originally published in Swedish in 2015)

Today, Astrid Lindgren is the well-known Swedish author of beloved books like the Pippi Longstocking tales. But during the Second World War, she was an unknown writer working as a secretary in Stockholm. In 1939, prompted by the outbreak of the war, she began keeping a diary “charged with sorrow and dread”, according to the Astrid Lindgren Company, “in which she writes about daily life in Stockholm, what’s going on in the world and about Sweden’s actions”.

By the time the war ended in 1945, she had filled 17 diaries with her thoughts, experiences and related press clippings. After the war, they were tucked away in a wicker laundry basket in her Stockholm apartment, where they went undiscovered until 2013.

Far from mundane, they chronicled her time as a postal censor, a highly secretive job that required her to read military and private mail going in and out of Sweden and redact sensitive or classified information. As her daughter noted in the foreword, however, “the restrictions did not prevent her from copying out, or quoting sections of, the more interesting letters in her diary…”. The diaries also document the origins and evolution of Pippi Longstocking, which would propel her to prominence when the first book was published in 1945.

6. Courage and Grief: Women and Sweden’s Thirty Years’ War, by Mary Elizabeth Ailes, published 2018

Between 1618 and 1648, most of the major powers in Europe were engaged in a war that eventually claimed around 20 percent of the European population. Sweden’s involvement began in 1630, when King Gustav II Adolf led his army into the Holy Roman Empire. By the end of the conflict, “Sweden had emerged as one of the victorious kingdoms”, historian Dr. Mary Elizabeth Ailes explains in Courage and Grief. “This achievement enhanced the kingdom’s international status” and “cemented the Swedish kingdom’s reputation as one of the era’s great military powers.”

But Courage and Grief is not simply another book about this well-documented and analyzed aspect of Swedish history. Rather, it expertly examines an aspect of the history that has been largely ignored: the role of women in the war, and its impact on their lives. It is an important addition to the historical record, not least because, as Ailes notes, “without women’s involvement both on the battlefield and on the home front, the Swedish Crown would not have achieved its military success”.

7. Operation Chaos: The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Themselves, by Matthew Sweet, published 2018

Though it may at first glance seem to have little to do with Swedish history, Operation Chaos tells the surprising history of around 800 American Vietnam War deserters who in the late 1960s found sanctuary in Sweden, “the only non-Communist country in Europe that offered asylum to those who refused to fight”, author Matthew Sweet explains.

Sweet recounts this interesting and at times bizarre aspect of modern Swedish history featuring – among other things – principles marred by paranoia and disillusionment, a controversial political organization that “proved a thorn in the side of the Swedish political establishment”, and a group Sweet describes as “an apocalyptic cult that believed in the satanic nature of the Queen of England, the prime minister of Sweden and the Beatles…”.

8. Karin Bergöö Larsson and the Emergence of Swedish Design, by Marge Thorell, published 2018

Long before Ikea, spouses Carl Larsson and Karin Bergöö Larsson literally and figuratively wrote the book that defined modern Swedish interior design. Artist and interior designer Karin was the mastermind behind their beautiful cottage, Lilla Hyttnäs, in Sundborn, Sweden. Carl captured their day-to-day life at Lilla Hyttnäs in a series of stunning watercolor paintings during the late 1800s that formed the basis of his 1899 book Ett Hem (A Home). The book was a bestseller, inspiring Scandinavians, Germans and Americans in particular to imitate the then-radically modern and eclectic Arts and Crafts style reflected in the paintings of the home.

This influence has been long-reaching, as noted in the foreword to Karin Bergöö Larsson and the Emergence of Swedish Design: “Global retail powerhouse Ikea cites Karin Larsson as one of founder Ingvar Kamprad’s guiding lights of inspiration, and as the ease of Swedish lifestyle spread globally with the company, so has interest in the origins of the Ikea style”.

Though Karin Bergöö Larsson’s legacy has long lived in the shadow of her husband’s, author Marge Thorell’s book remedies this, and provides insight into a more bohemian and unconventional side of Swedish history than is usually seen.

Victoria Martínez is an American historical researcher, writer and author of three historical non-fiction books. She lives in Småland county, Sweden, with her Spanish husband and their two children.

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A lot of people around the world, in particular North America to where hundreds of thousands of Swedes emigrated in the 18th and 19th century, have Swedish ancestors (turns out Taylor Swift may or may not be among them).

This article will take you through the basic steps of researching your family tree in Sweden.

Let’s concentrate on Sweden’s church books, which are by far your most useful resource. From the 17th century, priests were obliged to keep records on the residents in their parish, the main census bureau at the time, and Swedes do really love keeping records.

The best part is that these have all been digitised and are freely available from the National Archives of Sweden – the bulk of them online, and some even searchable, so you can look through them wherever you are in the world.

There are five main “books” that make up your key sources:

First, household examination records (husförhörslängder). Sweden today is very secular, but a few hundred years ago the Lutheran church was very powerful.

Parish priests between 1686 and the late 19th century used to visit their parishioners to quiz them on their knowledge of the Bible, literacy and knowledge of Luther’s Small Catechism – and mark them on their answers.

These visits were also an opportunity to make any updates to the official population records, so as outdated as they may seem today, as much of a goldmine are they for genealogy researchers.

The other four useful books are: lists of everyone who moved to and from a parish (inflyttnings- och utflyttningslängder), birth and christening records (födelse- och dopböcker), marriage records (lysnings- och vigselböcker), and finally the records of all deaths and funerals (död- och begravningsböcker).

So how do you go about tracking down a Swedish ancestor?

If you already know their name, date of birth or where in Sweden they were last registered as living, that goes a long way. But say you don’t have specific details, what can you then do?

I’m not a genealogy expert, so I will take you through this the way I would go about it.

Let’s try to track down my great, great grandfather on my father’s side.

From left, the article author, her father, great grandfather and grandfather. Photo: Private

You probably, like me, know your grandfather’s name. Chances are you probably also have some idea of roughly where and when they were born, even if you, like me, don’t know the specific year.

(I’m starting with my grandfather, but maybe your first Sweden-born ancestor was one of your great grandparents or even further back – hopefully you’ll find this imperfect example useful anyway)

In my case, I happen to know that my grandfather’s full name was Emil Verner Löfgren and that he was born in the region of Östergötland but spent most of his adult years in Blekinge.

But I don’t know his date of birth or death, which would help me track him down in the church books.

I start by going to the Swedish National Archives’ online search function and simply type in his name.

Helpfully, you can search in English, and in the screenshot below you can see some of the top results that come up: entries from the census, and old shipping rolls.

When I click on his name, I get enough information about him and his family that I can tell that it all adds up and I’ve found the right Emil Löfgren.

Screenshot: Swedish National Archives

Now, I got lucky. Emil spent a few years at sea in his youth, so he’s listed in the shipping rolls. They helpfully tell me his exact date of birth and his parents’ names, so I’ve already come a long way just by doing a quick online search.

In case you’re not as lucky, let’s pretend for the sake of this article that I only found him in the census. That tells me at least two crucial details: his year of birth and where he was born.

Screenshot: Swedish National Archives

It’s time now to abandon the online search and get digging through the church books, which conveniently are also online, but require you to search them manually. If you didn’t find your ancestor in the online search, you’ll have to go straight to the church books.

I want to find out Emil’s exact date of birth, so I go to the church archives on the National Archives’ homepage and search for Karlshamn.

I now get a long list of all the available church records from Karlshamn, but in this case I want the parish register from 1930 (församlingsbok – before 1895-ish known as the house examination book) where the above information tells me I can find Emil.

Helpfully, it also tells me exactly on which page of the parish register to look, so I track down the book and turn to page 2624.

Screenshot: Swedish National Archives

The screenshot above tells me Emil’s name (Verner is here spelled with a W – you may find spelling variations of the same person’s name, especially if your ancestor changed their name from, say, Karl/Carl to Charles), his profession, his exact date of birth, place of birth, that he’s been vaccinated against the smallpox, date of marriage and where he last appeared in the church books (under inflyttad eller överförd).

The last bit is helpful if I want to trace every step of Emil’s life, as it tells me that his previous entry was on page 3720 in the previous edition of the parish register from Karlshamn (where it says “G.b.” – meaning gamla boken, “old book”). But that’s not what I want to do right now.

Instead, I want to know the name of his father. I know that he was born on September 9th, 1884, in Ringarum.

Let’s go to the church books of Ringarum…

I now instead look for the birth and christening records (födelse- och dopböcker) from the year 1884. Because I have his date of birth, it’s relatively easy to flick through the pages and find him (note that births are listed in a rough, but not always exact, order). Even if you only have the year of birth, you may still find them this way, but it will take you longer as you’ll have to go through the whole year.

Screenshot: Swedish National Archives

So the above screenshot tells me when Emil was born, christened, and the names of his parents: Adolf Werner Löfgren Gåse (they’ve included his professional title at the time, a boatsman, båtsman, in the Swedish Navy) and Emma Charlotta Eriksdotter.

It also tells me where they were living at the time (a croft called Gåstorp) and, supremely helpfully, exactly what page to find them on in the house examination records (page 163), so that’s our next stop.

And just like that, I have Adolf’s date and parish of birth (Mogata, September 8th, 1858 – see the screenshot below), as well as the year he married (May 22nd, 1884, which mathematically skilled readers will note was, er, not more than nine months before Emil was born).

On the right, you also see his and his wife’s marks from the house examination sessions, i.e. their reading abilities and how well they know their Bible and Luther.

Screenshot: Swedish National Archives

If I were to take a closer look at Adolf’s life, it would tell me that after he retired as a boatsman, he worked as a shoemaker. His parents died when he was very young, so he was sold at a “child auction” – a way of boarding out orphans and poor children in 19th century Sweden.

At these auctions, the child was handed over to the lowest bidder – whoever was willing to provide for the child for the least money from the authorities. The foster parent was compensated by the state with an amount equal to the bid in return for providing the child with housing, food and education. How good a home they provided varied hugely and in some cases it was a way of acquiring cheap child labour.

But what I want to find out for the purpose of this article is the name of Adolf’s father, so I just repeat some of the steps above.

I now search for the church records for Mogata parish, and use Adolf’s date of birth to find him in the birth records.

The priest’s handwriting is getting harder and harder to read, but I can still make out the names of Adolf’s parents (föräldrar). His father was shoemaker Erik Johan Löfgren and mother Sofia Ulrika Nilsdotter. Also listed are his godparents (faddrar).

Screenshot: Swedish National Archives

So there you go. I’ve now found what I set out to: the name of my great, great grandfather.

If I were to go even further back, I would probably notice that Erik Johan was the first man in the family to hold the surname Löfgren.

Most Swedes before or around this time used patronymics. This is where surnames such as Andersson and Svensson come from; they originally literally meant “son of Anders” and “son of Svensson”, so every new son got his surname after his father. This changed in the 18th or early 19th century, when people either took a new name (like Löfgren) or started passing their old -son name to the next generation.

You’ll notice that for example Erik Johan’s wife held the surname Nilsdotter. This is because her father’s name was Nils.

I’ve now taken you through the easiest and cheapest way of tracing your Swedish ancestry. But you may hit stumbling blocks along the way. For example, it’s not uncommon for children a few hundred years ago to have been born out of wedlock with no official father listed.

There are plenty of other free and paid-for sites that could help you. Some of these are the Swedish genealogy forum Rötter, subscription sites such as Ancestry, My Heritage and the database Sveriges dödbok (literally: Sweden’s death book, searchable records of deaths and burials, which a lot of genealogy researchers swear by), and various Facebook groups (search for släktforskning – family research).

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