When electricity becomes as expensive as it currently is, and with the risk of energy rationing in the air, it’s easy to think that maybe things were better in the past before society became so desperately dependent on electricity.

After all, Swedes descended from generations of northerners who managed to survive for thousands of years in the area’s cold climate.

Is there something we can learn from history to help us get through the ongoing energy crisis?

No comfort to be found in history

Jonas Engman, an ethnologist at the Nordic Museum, does not think people should romanticize the old times too much.

“There is no comfort to be found in history. It was cold, people were freezing, and they got sick,” he told the news agency TT.

According to Engman, 150 to 200 years ago, very few people lived in the cities. Most lived in the countryside, and the vast majority lived in rather miserable housing – small and drafty crofts or hillside cabins dug into the terrain.

It was cold, really cold. Temperatures were somewhat more similar to what we are used to these days only in the more well-off homes, he says.

“It was terrible. But you had no choice when it came to the cold,” he says.

Challenging living conditions

Therefore, looking for energy-saving tricks in the past is somewhat misguided.

“They had nothing to save,” the ethnologist notes.

People lived in cramped conditions and slept in the same room with their clothes on. For those who had several rooms, it was unthinkable to heat them all.

But the misery made people take action. Better housing standards were promoted, and when homes began to take shape a bit into the 20th century, warmth and hygiene were prioritized.

For example, some form of central heating was required in stand-alone houses that were built.

“When people moved into the cities and got better housing, the heat was no longer an issue,” Engman says.

At Skansen, there are old historical buildings from which we can get an idea of ​​how people lived in the past.

Cold and dark

Kerstin Holm Söderkvist, an ethnologist and museum educator at Skansen, points to Backmat’s cabin from Venjan in Dalarna. It is very old, from 1755, but people lived there until the 1920s.

A whole large family lived in it. Back then, it was completely normal for around ten people to share such a small area.

“People gathered around the hearth. It provided warmth, light, and food and was the heart of the home,” she says.

The Sweden of old was not only cold – it was also dark. Candles were a luxury; an ordinary family perhaps had only a few dozen tallow candles a year, which were saved for Christmas.

“People didn’t have a lot of clothes,” Holm Söderkvist adds.

From the 1860s, iron stoves became part of homes. Perhaps also tile stoves for those who were better off. They had existed from the 15th-16th centuries but were further technically developed in the 18th century. But they were only for the rich. Ordinary people could not afford them.

“When the iron stove replaced the open hearth, the process became much more efficient. But it also got dark. Then the kerosene lamp came into use,” Holm Söderkvist noted.