Swedes

• 1. Introduction

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  Swedes, or svenskar as they call themselves in their own tongue, are one of the oldest continuously documented peoples in European history. In 98 AD, the Roman historian Tacitus described them in his Germania as a powerful tribe "distinguished not merely for their arms and men, but for their powerful fleets." Those ships had a prow at both ends, able to sail in any direction without turning around. From that first written glimpse, the story of the Swedish people opens outward in every direction: to Baghdad, to Constantinople, to the coasts of North America, and eventually to a seat in the European Union and NATO. Who were these people who gave rise to that description? Where did their name come from? And how did a scarcely populated country on the fringe of medieval Europe become one of the continent's most significant powers? Those are the questions worth following.

• 2. A Name and Its Roots

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  The English word "Swede" has been traceable in written English only since the late 16th century, borrowed from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German. The Swedish form, svensk, reaches back much further. It comes from the name of the svear, the people who inhabited Svealand in eastern central Sweden. Tacitus, writing in the first century AD, listed them as Suiones. Scholars believe the name traces back to the Proto-Indo-European reflexive root s(w)e, the same root as the Latin word suus. The meaning, if this derivation is correct, would have been something close to "one's own tribesmen": a word not for strangers or subjects, but for one's own kind. That same root and original meaning surfaces in the ethnonym of the Germanic tribe Suebi, whose name survives to this day in the German region of Swabia. By the time the Icelander Snorri Sturluson wrote in the early 13th century, the sixth-century Swedish king Adils was already a figure of legend, credited with possessing "the finest horses of his days."

• 3. Migration, Vendel, and the Gothic Legacy

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  The years 535 and 536 mark a turning point in early Scandinavian history. Extreme weather events shook society to its core, and as much as 50% of Scandinavia's population is thought to have died as a result. What followed, the Vendel Period, showed a society that had militarized in response. Rich burial sites at Vendel, Valsgärde, and in the great mounds at Gamla Uppsala contained boat inhumation graves used across several generations. Graves of elite mounted warriors held stirrups and saddle ornaments cast in gilded bronze, encrusted with garnets. The Sutton Hoo helmet, unearthed in England, closely resembles helmets found at those Swedish sites, pointing to deep contacts between the Anglo-Saxon and Swedish elites. Meanwhile, Gothic populations who had originated in what Jordanes called semi-legendary Scandza, believed to be somewhere in modern Götaland, had already crossed the Baltic Sea before the second century AD. They pushed into Scythia on the coast of the Black Sea in modern Ukraine, leaving their traces in the Chernyakhov culture. In the fifth and sixth centuries these groups divided into the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, founding successor states of the Roman Empire in the Iberian Peninsula and Italy. Crimean Gothic communities appear to have persisted intact as late as the 18th century.

• 4. The Viking World

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  The Swedish Viking Age lasted roughly from the eighth through the 11th centuries. While Scandinavian Vikings in general are often imagined heading west toward Britain and France, the Swedish Vikings and the Gutar turned predominantly east and south, reaching Finland, the Baltic countries, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the Black Sea, and as far as Baghdad. Their routes followed the Dnieper river south to Constantinople, where the Byzantine Emperor Theophilos took note of their fighting abilities and invited them to serve as his personal bodyguard, the Varangian Guard. The Arabic traveller Ibn Fadlan encountered them on the Volga and left one of history's most vivid written portraits: "I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy; they wear neither tunics nor caftans, but the men wear a garment which covers one side of the body and leaves a hand free. Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife, and keeps each by him at all times." Swedish Vikings called the Rus are believed by many scholars to be the founding fathers of Kievan Rus. Their adventures were commemorated back home on runestones: the Greece Runestones, the Varangian Runestones, and the England Runestones. The last major Swedish Viking expedition appears to have been Ingvar the Far-Travelled's ill-fated journey to Serkland, the region south-east of the Caspian Sea. The Ingvar Runestones that commemorate the expedition mention no survivors.

• 5. Trade, Christianity, and the Feudal Exception

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  Around 750 AD, a trading port called Birka was founded on the island of Björkö, not far from where Stockholm would later be built. Birka served as the Baltic link in the Dnieper Trade Route, connecting through Ladoga and Novgorod all the way to the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate. It was abandoned around 975 AD, roughly the same time Sigtuna was founded as a Christian town some 35 kilometers to the northeast. At its height, Birka's population is estimated to have been between 500 and 1,000 people. Christianity arrived with St. Ansgar in 829, though the new religion did not substantially displace paganism until the 12th century. By 1050 Sweden was counted as a Christian nation. What distinguished Sweden from much of Europe during this period was the near-total absence of feudalism. Except for the province of Skåne, which was under Danish control, Swedish peasants remained largely free farmers throughout most of their history. Slavery, known as thralldom, was uncommon and was driven further out of existence by the spread of Christianity and the difficulty of obtaining enslaved people from lands east of the Baltic. By a decree of King Magnus IV Eriksson in 1335, both slavery and serfdom were formally abolished. Freed slaves were absorbed into the peasantry or became laborers in towns, and this free peasant class would later prove decisive in shaping Swedish democracy.

• 6. Empire and Its Collapse

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  Gustav Vasa became king on the 6th of June 1523, a date now celebrated as Sweden's national holiday, after the union monarch Christian II of Denmark ordered the massacre of Swedish nobles at Stockholm in 1520. That event, known as the Stockholm Bloodbath, propelled the Swedish nobility into open resistance. Gustav Vasa promptly broke Catholicism's hold on the country and led Sweden into the Protestant Reformation. He also dismantled the Hanseatic League's monopoly over Swedish Baltic trade, a League that had been formally constituted at Lübeck in 1356. Lübeck merchants had come to dominate Stockholm's commercial life; under their system, two-thirds of Stockholm's imports were textiles and one-third was salt. With that monopoly broken, Gustav I became, as history now judges him, the father of the modern Swedish nation. His successors built on this foundation. By the middle of the 17th century, Sweden was the third-largest country in Europe by land area, surpassed only by Russia and Spain. During the Thirty Years' War, Sweden conquered approximately half of the Holy Roman states. King Gustavus Adolphus planned to become the new Holy Roman Emperor, but he died at the Battle of Lützen in 1632. The Swedish armies may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages, and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns. Sweden reached its greatest territorial extent under Charles X after the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658. The end came at Poltava in 1709, where Tsar Peter the Great's scorched-earth tactics, cossack raids, and a devastatingly cold winter left the Swedish force weakened and enormously outnumbered. Charles XII was shot dead at Fredriksten fortress in 1718. By the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, Sweden ceded vast territories and lost its status as a Baltic empire. In that war alone, Sweden lost an estimated 200,000 men.

• 7. Emigration and Democracy

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  Between 1750 and 1850, Sweden's population doubled, but the country remained poor and almost entirely agricultural even as western neighbors began to industrialize. The last naturally caused famine to strike Europe hit Sweden in 1867-69, killing thousands. The writer Esaias Tegnér had attributed the earlier population surge in 1833 to "peace, vaccine, and potatoes," but growing numbers found Sweden offered little future. Between 1850 and 1910, more than one million Swedes moved to the United States. In the early 20th century, more Swedes lived in Chicago than in Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city. Most settled in the Midwestern United States, with a large concentration in Minnesota. Back in Sweden, strong grassroots movements shaped a new politics during the latter half of the 19th century: trade unions, temperance groups, and independent religious congregations built a foundation of democratic practice. The Swedish Social Democratic Party was founded in 1889. A communist revolution was avoided in 1917, and comprehensive democratic reforms followed under the joint Liberal-Social Democrat cabinet of Nils Edén and Hjalmar Branting. Universal suffrage for men was enacted in 1918 and for women in 1919. The free peasantry that had never been enserfed, a condition unique in Europe, meant that as industrialization expanded the economic gains flowed more broadly than in countries like Poland, where serfdom had bound rural populations for centuries.

• 8. Neutrality, Prosperity, and NATO

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  Sweden remained officially neutral through both World Wars, though its neutrality in the second was contested. The country supplied steel and machined parts to Germany throughout the war, yet also supported Norwegian resistance and in 1943 helped rescue Danish Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps. Following the war, Sweden used an intact industrial base to supply the rebuilding of Europe. It participated in the Marshall Plan and joined the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. The economy expanded substantially under Social Democratic governance, which cooperated closely with trade unions and industry. Then came the oil embargoes of 1973-74 and 1978-79, which set off economic upheaval. By the 1980s, shipbuilding was discontinued, the steel industry was concentrated and specialized, and mechanical engineering was robotized. Between 1970 and 1990 the overall tax burden rose by over 10%, and the marginal income tax for workers exceeded 80%. A fiscal crisis in the early 1990s followed a burst real estate bubble, with Sweden's GDP declining by around 5%. In 1992 a run on the currency forced the central bank to briefly raise interest rates to 500%. The government responded with spending cuts and reforms, and on the 13th of November 1994 a referendum passed with 52% in favour of joining the European Union. Sweden formally joined on the 1st of January 1995. After more than 200 years of official neutrality, Sweden joined NATO on the 7th of March 2024, a decision driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The 2022 survey by Swedes Worldwide counted approximately 685,000 Swedish citizens living outside Sweden, up from 546,000 in 2011, with the United States home to the largest single group at 179,000.