Estimating Sweden’s population in the early modern period : methods and numbers

Examining the population in pre-modern society is a great challenge from the historian’s point of view. Relevant source material is often missing, and what is still there can be methodically difficult to handle. The historiography on demographic research on population developments in Sweden for the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries testifies to these problems. It is striking how markedly different assessments historians have made of the number of inhabitants in Sweden during the period. The differences depend on varying interpretations connected to demographic parameters such as household sizes, age composition, migration, etc., and their change over time. In this article, I will first briefly present the previous research and my critique of some of its positions. I will then present sources, methods and my own, partly new, estimates of Sweden’s population for some benchmark years, namely 1571-1750.