SWEDISH POPULATION TRENDS BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
T tHE year I949 saw the bicentenary of the oldest unbroken series of population statistics in the world. Organized Swedish statistics started in I 749, and it is a matter of surprise how full they were from the start. Returns had been ordered to be sent in as far back as i720, 'when God granted the realm the comforting peace'; but some of them do not appear to have come to light, and none were worked up. It has been my good fortune to bring them together and fill in the gaps, so that the oldest population statistics are now carried almost three decades still further back, though this supplement for the years I 72 I-48 is not comparable in either fullness or reliability with the original work, beginning with I 749. The leading Swedish statistician around i900, Gustav Sundbarg, devoted many years of his life to restoring this ancient masterpiece, which, in its field, represented to him the greatest masterpiece in the world; and the statistics are now mostly, and justly, used in the form he gave to them. Though my subject is a much wider one, I intend to confine myself mainly to the trends to be studied for Sweden on this basis, comparing these results, however, when possible with those referring to other countries. In some respects Sweden seems to me to be in a unique position, because it was a country in a backward condition as compared with western Europe, but one with a more efficient administration than could be found in most countries at the time. The result has been that it is possible to study the old regime there with the help of better materials than may easily be found in other places. This is my excuse for the narrowness of my treatment of the subject; I hope it will be found to justify itself. Swedish population statistics were not based upon census returns in the proper sense of the word, but upon registers-parish registers. These owed their origin to the Law of the Church of Sweden of i686, enjoining upon the clergy the duty of keeping registers of births (baptisms), deaths (burials), and marriages (weddings), as well as rolls of parishioners, besides many other data, among which causes of deaths were perhaps the most unusual. A drawback it certainly was that for more than a century only summaries for each province were sent in to the central authority. But the system of