ONE LAND · 12 ATLASES
History of Sweden in maps
Sweden as it appears in 12 interactive history atlases, from 790 to 2015: Sweden. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Sweden before it was Sweden? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
Sweden · Norse and Aztecs
The Swedes looked east, sailing the Baltic and the rivers of Russia toward Byzantium and the Islamic world, and bringing back much of the silver found in Scandinavian hoards. Hundreds of silver hoards have been found on Gotland alone, many full of Islamic coins. The eastern routes paid for the ships and warriors whose western voyages fill this atlas.
| Norse homelands & settlements — the opening position |
NORSE AND AZTECS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · Industrial Revolution
A poor, rural country that became one of Europe’s fastest-growing economies after 1870. Timber, iron ore and later hydroelectric power fed sawmills, paper mills, steelworks and engineering firms such as the ball-bearing maker SKF, founded in 1907. Around a million Swedes emigrated to America between the 1850s and 1914, a measure of how hard life had been before industry arrived.
| Industrialising — the opening position | |
| Industrialising | |
| Industrial economy | |
| Industrialising | |
| Industrial economy |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · Age of Revolutions
| Neutral / uncommitted — the opening position | |
| The conservative monarchies |
AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
| Non-aligned or stateless — the opening position |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · Russian Revolution
Neutral Sweden was the revolution’s doorstep and its counting-house: Lenin’s sealed-train party crossed it in April 1917 (he bought new boots in Stockholm, at his comrades’ insistence), and Swedish banks became the conduit through which Bolshevik gold reached the West once the blockade bit. The Finnish civil war and the Baltic fighting on its doorstep made Bolshevism feel very close; Stockholm sheltered refugees from both sides and quarrelled with the new Finland over the Åland Islands.
| Neutral or independent — the opening position |
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · WWI
Sweden · Stalin’s Soviet Union
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · Road to WW2
| Neutral & unaligned — the opening position |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · WW2
Neutral Sweden sold Germany the iron ore that built its tanks (via Narvik, Ch. 3) while sheltering Danish Jews and Allied airmen. Small states between giants survived by balancing — study Sweden and Switzerland as case studies in constrained choice.
Sweden · Cold War
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution
| Right won in law — the opening position | |
| Partial or unequal; treaty signed only; transition | |
| No reform yet / outside this story | |
| Right won in law |
FEMINISM AND THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Sweden · Refugee crises
Neutral Sweden became an early place of asylum. In 1945 the Swedish Red Cross’s White Buses carried about 15,000 concentration-camp prisoners to Sweden, and thousands more survivors arrived by sea that summer. Earlier it had taken in about 30,000 Estonians and Latvians fleeing the Soviet advance, though in 1946 it controversially handed over to the Soviet Union about 150 Baltic soldiers who had served in German uniform.
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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