History of Sweden: A Captivating Guide to Swedish History, Starting from Ancient Times through the Viking Age and Swedish Empire to the Present

By Captivating History

Did you know that Viking-age Swedes were the founding dynasty of what eventually became Russia?

In contrast to their Danish and Norwegian cousins, Swedish Vikings traveled east rather than west in search of riches, land, and power. The extensive river systems of Russia provided economic and military "super-highways" to the adventurers from the north, who journeyed down them all the way to the Black Sea and Constantinople in search of fame and riches.

The rise in TV shows and movies has renewed the people's interest in Vikings, but the Swedish Vikings have been notably absent from these accounts. In Captivating History's History of Sweden, you will learn more about these Swedish adventurers, along with other parts of Sweden's fascinating history.

In this book, you will discover:

• The Swedes' fierce struggle to gain independence
• The "Father of Sweden," King Gustav Vasa and his dynasty that spawned some of the greatest military minds in Europe
• How the Swedish Empire achieved success and expanded as far as North America
• Sweden's revolutionary war tactics and how that led to victories on the battlefield
• Why Sweden adopted its famous policy of neutrality
• The hero Raoul Wallenberg and his role in WWII
• And much more!

 

Scroll up and click the "add to cart" button to learn more about the history of Sweden!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Captivating History
• Release date: Oct 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215680773

Book preview

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Introduction

When asked to name something they know about Sweden, many people (especially in the English-speaking world) will name the following, in no particular order: the ready-to-make furniture brand IKEA, the famously safe Volvo cars, the Vikings, the somewhat infamous Old Milwaukee Beer Swedish Bikini Team commercials, the Nobel Prize, and ABBA.

Among the more concrete and serious things that many know (or think they know) about Sweden are the so-called cradle to the grave welfare state and the nation’s famous neutrality. Sweden has not been involved in a war in some two hundred years. Recently, many might know that Sweden is starting to struggle with issues over immigration from the war-torn Middle East, especially since 2015.

Obviously, there is much more to Sweden than Vikings, cars, furniture, and blondes. (Though a recent study concluded that somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of Swedes have light hair, not all are blonde, although they are some of the tallest people in the world.) In Captivating History’s History of Sweden, you’ll find out all you want to know about this famous Nordic country.

Chapter 1 – Just the Facts

Let’s begin with a few facts about the country before we delve into its history. If you think about it, Sweden has been mentioned numerous times in the news recently, whether on an international issue like climate change (the issue in which Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg made a name for herself in the last few years) or its place in between Russia and Europe/NATO. There is the Nobel Prize and Sweden’s stellar performance at the 2022 Winter Olympics. However, Sweden is home to just over ten million people. That is only about a million more than the number of people living in New York City. Yet Sweden has been playing an important role in world events for hundreds of years, and at one time, it was a considerable world power.

In a list of the population of European countries, Sweden ranks about midway between Russia, with 146 million, and the small independent principality of San Marino, with 34,000 (we’re not counting Vatican City, home of the pope). But even the geographically smaller nations of Holland and Greece have more people than Sweden.

However, in terms of geographic size, Sweden ranks fifth (and it would be third if Russia and Ukraine were left out, which is sometimes done). Sweden comprises 173,860 square miles (450,295 square kilometers), which pulls it just ahead of its other large Scandinavian neighbors, Norway and Finland. However, these countries are not always included as part of Scandinavia, which is traditionally seen by many as the triad of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, although some include Iceland.

Sweden in comparison to the United States of America.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Finland_%E2%80%93_U.S._area_comparison.jpg

Sweden’s widest part, the south of the country, is 310 miles (500 kilometers) wide. North to south, however, Sweden is 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers). Think of it this way: from the southern part of Sweden to Italy is about 1,000 miles, which means the north of Sweden is quite far from the capital of Stockholm in the south. Thus, there are some significant differences in the country, primarily the weather but culturally as well. Another way of picturing the size of the country is this way: Sweden is about the size of the US state of California. And California and Japan are roughly the same size area-wise.

Another important comparison is that, unlike California, Sweden does not have much arable land. What it did grow was rather limited (at least until relatively recent times, before the advent of many advances in agriculture). In this way, Sweden is very similar to Japan, and both nations have depended on the sea in various ways, such as for trade, food, and defense.

Many people believe Sweden to be cold year-round, and while about 15 percent of its area lies north of the Arctic Circle, much of the country is warmer than similarly situated nations. Though Sweden is at about the same latitude as Greenland, northern Siberia, and Alaska, it is kept relatively warmer by the Gulf Stream, which swirls around the coasts of the nation from west to east. Still, the nation is not exactly Jamaica either. In the winter, the people living in that 15 percent of the northern part of the country sometimes experience sub-zero temperatures (up, or rather down, to -40°F/-40°C).

As you can likely imagine, the population of the country is mostly Swedish, comprising about 81 percent. The massive influx of refugees from the war-torn Middle East has had a huge impact on the country, which we will discuss toward the end of the book, but the numbers are quite small, at least comparatively. Together, Syrians and Iraqis make up about 3.2 percent of the population, and most live in the major cities in the south, particularly Stockholm. Finns comprise about 1.4 percent, and others, mostly Poles, Ukrainians, Turks, and people whose origin is in the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, make up about 15 percent altogether. Many of the Eastern Europeans arrived in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, but guest workers from Poland and Ukraine still come to Sweden, sometimes on a temporary work visa.

In Sweden’s prehistory and into the Middle Ages, the country was dominated by two tribes: the Goths and the Svears, from which Sweden takes its Swedish language name of Sverige. Also making up part of the population in both ancient and modern times is the Sámi, who for many years were called Lapps (a name that they regard as derogatory since it was given to them by foreigners). Today, the Sámi people are found in Sweden, Norway, and Finland, as well as on the Russo-Finnish border area.

Within Scandinavia, the Sámi have struggled and won the right for their own parliaments, but these are limited in power when it comes to questions of the Sámi culture. Each Scandinavian nation has a Sámi Parliament, but Russia does not (we are going to include Finland in Scandinavia for our purposes here, though some writers, historians, and politicians do not). All of the Sámi of Scandinavia have the right to cross the borders of other Scandinavian countries. For centuries, the Sámis’ primary source of income and food was the large reindeer herds they managed. Today, there are only about twenty-five thousand people who identify as solely Sámi in Sweden, but they have ties with Sámi in Norway and Finland. Like many minorities around the world, the Sámi were long persecuted by the majority population, particularly as Sweden became Christian and as the nation became industrialized in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Sápmi, the Sámi homeland today.

Rogper at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LocationSapmi.png

Relative to the size of its population, Sweden is an economic powerhouse. Among the nations in Europe that have about the same number of people (the Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Belarus, and Austria), Sweden’s gross domestic product (GDP) is the highest. Of Europe in total, it ranks tenth with a GDP of $540 billion (Germany is first at $3 trillion).

Sweden's main economic goods, for both domestic consumption and export, are engines and engine parts (both airplane and automotive), motor vehicles, and telecommunications equipment. Timber has been an important product of the country since the early Middle Ages, and the region also has iron, coal, and copper.

As you will read later, Sweden