Sweden Demography
Demography and anthropology. – The Swedes belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family and more properly to the special division which is designated by the name of Scandinavian peoples (see also Scandinavia).
The number of Swedes in the kingdom, as will be explained later, on 1 January 1934 was 6,211,566. The whole of the Swedish people can be considered today as ascending to more than 7 million men, if we count the million Swedes who reside in America; but of these a large part must have abandoned the Swedish language in favor of the English one. In Europe, 350,000 Swedes live in Finland and a little over 100,000 in other states. Among these (as of January 1, 1920) 47,216 are in Norway, 36,142 in Denmark, about 10,000 in Germany. Because outside the Swedish lineage only about 30,000 residents live in Sweden. of Finnish origin, about 7,000 Lapps and about 40,000 residents of other nations which have settled there, it can be rightly said that Sweden possesses a rare and high degree of ethnographic homogeneity. For Sweden 2018, please check ethnicityology.com.
The number of people who speak Swedish was estimated in 1921 at nearly nine million, of which 6 million Swedes from the kingdom, 2 million Swedes-Americans, 340,000 Swedes from Finland and 8000 Swedes from Estonia. Swedish emigration to the United States of America was especially strong around 1860 during the famine years in Sweden, declined towards 1870 as a result of Sweden’s favorable conjunctures, and achieved impressive magnitude from 1880 to 1895 during the European agrarian crisis.. The majority of Swedes in the United States live in the states of Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, South and North Dakota, and Nebraska.
In spite of the enormous emigration, the Swedes managed to conserve during the century. XIX their position. In the last decades, however, the surplus of births has strongly decreased: in 1901-10 it was 10.85%, in 1933 only 3.17%.
The Swedish people are tall (average: 1722 mm.) And relatively dolichocephalic (index 77.7); 86% of Swedes have light eyes (only 5% dark), 70% have blond hair. The face is mostly narrow, the nose straight or slightly curved. All this indicates that the Swedish people, while mixed race like all the others, on the whole have the distinctive characteristics of the Nordic race more deeply than others. This especially applies to central Sweden. Due to the entry of Finns (especially of the Baltic type from the east), of Lapps and others, Lapland, Västerbotten and Angermannland have a less Nordic imprint.
The indication, which appears in some foreign ethnographic maps, that the whole interior of Sweden, up to the 62nd degree of latitude, is inhabited by Lapps, is completely inaccurate. Of Jämtland’s 133,000 residents, only 800 are Lapps, and in Lapland itself the Lapps make up not even a tenth of the population. The 30,000 Finns are mostly found in the län of Norrbotten, where they form, especially in the Torne valley, a compact mass. In the mining territories of the middle Sweden it happened during the sec. XVI and XVII immigration of a fairly large mass of Finns, who however are now completely merged with the Swedish population. The same can be said for the Walloon colony (from Belgium), who were called in in the seventeenth century to work on the iron mines around Dannemora.
Population density and urban centers. – The 1930 census raised the population of Sweden to 6,142,191; this had risen, according to the registry of 1 January 1934 to 6,211,566, with a population density of about 15 residents per sq. km. The density varies greatly from region to region: the highest is in the Scania plains (107 per sq km in the Malmö län), the lowest is in northern Norrland (2.1 per sq km in the Norrbotten län). Only 32.6% of the population lived in cities in 1930; 12.8% live in smaller agglomerations, which nevertheless have an urban character, so that it can be said that approximately half of the population lives in real centers; the other half constitutes the population of the countryside. This is reflected in the fact that about 40% of the population lives on agriculture.
The most densely populated regions are the lowlands of Scania, Västergötland and Östergötland, the coasts of western Sweden and the lowlands around Lake Mälar. In these regions there are also the largest cities: Stockholm, capital of Sweden (521,618 residents), Gothenburg (252,721), Malmö (132,090), Norrköping (62,266), Hälsingborg (57,573), Örebro (38,483), Eskilstuna (33,368), Upsala (31.560), Västerås (31.229), Linköping (31.579), Lund (25.550), Halmstad (24.884). On the outskirts are Gävle (39,099), Boras (40,580), Jönköping (32,069). Karlskrona (28,482) and Kalmar (20,410) stand isolated. The respective län (provinces) of a total of 84,052 sq km. – one fifth of the country’s surface – are those of Stockholm, Södermanland, Upsala, Östergötland, Kristianstad, Malmöhus, Halland, Göteborg and Bohus, Älvsborg, Skaraborg, Örebro and Västmanland. They have 3,704,993 residents (almost two thirds of the population) with an average population density of about 44 residents per sq km. Less densely populated are the southern Swedish plateau, the Jämtland torpedo plain and the coasts of Norrland, excluding the highly populated area of hydraulic sawmills at the mouths of the Ljusnan, Liungan, Indal, Ångerman and Pite. The interior of Norrland is a true desert with small agglomerations along the new internal railway; elsewhere only the valleys are inhabited, and poorly. the siluric plain of Jämtland and the coasts of Norrland, excluding the highly populated area of hydraulic sawmills at the mouths of the Ljusnan, Liungan, Indal, Ångerman and Pite. The interior of Norrland is a true desert with small agglomerations along the new internal railway; elsewhere only the valleys are inhabited, and poorly. the siluric plain of Jämtland and the coasts of Norrland, excluding the highly populated area of hydraulic sawmills at the mouths of the Ljusnan, Liungan, Indal, Ångerman and Pite. The interior of Norrland is a true desert with small agglomerations along the new internal railway; elsewhere only the valleys are inhabited, and poorly.
In the year 1570 the population of Sweden, in its present borders, was estimated at about 900,000 residents. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the “great Nordic war” and the plague caused a strong decrease, which however was followed by a massive increase in the population (with an annual increase of 10%), until at the beginning of the century. XIX followed a new short-term decline. The increase of population in the century. XIX, a period of uninterrupted peace, was very great, but emigration, especially towards the United States, which began around 1870, contributed to greatly decrease the number of the population. The emigration, which deprived Sweden of about one million people, reached the figure of 2400 in 1934; its peak was reached in 1887 with 50,800 people. L’ emigration has hit the agricultural regions the most: they also lose a large part of their residents who migrate to the cities. At the beginning of the century XIX the population of the city absorbed only 10% of the total population; in 1934 it absorbed 33%. An exception is Norrland, with a huge increase in population at the expense of the coasts of southern Sweden. In the year 1751 Norrland had only 8.3% of the Swedish population; in 1865 it had 12.2%, today it has risen to collect 18% of the total population. This large increase in Norrland’s population was caused by the considerable development of the mining and forestry industries.
