December 18, 1884 was a cold and overcast Thursday and Swedish readers could open the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper for the first time. The first issue consisted of only four pages, and for 5 öre – 10 öre for rural residents – you could read, in addition to advertisements and the weather report, that August Strindberg was acquitted of the charge of blasphemy in his collection of short stories ”Giftas”.
Behind the new venture were a few gentlemen who wanted to create ”a free-minded, sane and Swedish organ for the bourgeois classes”, as the first editors-in-chief Axel Jäderin and Oscar Norén put it. The idea was a newspaper that took a stand for market economy, competition and free trade, wanted stronger customs protection for industry and agriculture and worked for a dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union.
But even though readers flocked to and appreciated Svenska Dagbladet, which came to be known as Sweden’s first national newspaper, it initially suffered a number of childhood ailments in the form of internal battles and unstable finances. Only four years after the start, finances were exhausted.
SvD as an ”intelligence paper”
The turning point came in 1897 when the national poet and Nobel laureate Verner von Heidenstam, together with Ernst Thiel and Oscar Levertin, among others, stepped in and took over the newspaper and laid the foundation for it as an important cultural newspaper. In the statement of the program, Heidenstam formulated that the new Svenska Dagbladet would be ”a new large intelligence newspaper” that would become an organ for the educated classes as well as for science and art. The new editor-in-chief Helmer Key announced that the paper would no longer be ”ultra-conservative but moderately liberal”. In connection with this, the editorial office moved to premises at the intersection of Klara Södra Kyrkogata 6 and Karduansmakargatan 13 in Klarakvarteren.
At the beginning of the century, SvD had become the country’s leading cultural newspaper and went by the joking designation ”Kulturduvan”, with writers such as Ellen Key, Carl Larsson and Hjalmar Söderberg. The latter’s impression of editorial life was shared by readers in ”Den allvarsamma leken” in 1912, where the newspaper was half disguised as ”Nationalbladet”.
As early as 1898, 18-year-old Lotten Ekman was employed in the editorial office. Among other things, she wrote reports and reviews under about 40 different signatures and is usually described as one of the first female Swedish ”star reporters”. For a period, she acted as head of foreign affairs.
Even if the editorial office, like other newspapers, was strongly male-dominated, more and more women would be employed. The newspaper had begun to open up to a wider readership with reports, interviews, family pages and material aimed at women, which also required female reporters.
Ester Blenda Nordström, who wrote several ground-breaking reports under the signature Bansai, excelled. On June 28, 1914, the same day that the shots fell in Sarajevo and started the First World War, ”A month as a servant girl on a farm in Södermanland” was published, a description of how Ester Blenda worked as a maid, and long before Gunther Wallraff disguised herself to reveal unknown societal conditions. The report then became a best-selling book, ”A maid among maids”.
Other prominent female journalists during this time were Gerda Marcus, Célie Brunius and Märta Lindqvist. The latter wrote emerging film journalism under the signature Quelqu’une.
One of the newspaper’s milestones was when the essay page ”Under the line” became a permanent institution with the Danish Politiken’s ”Kronik” as a model. The idea came to editorial secretary Ewald Stomberg when, during the summer holidays, he thought about how to attract readers when the war ended.
On October 17, 1918, the department was presented to SvD’s readers and described as a ”neutral forum for the treatment of cultural issues of interest to the large educated public”. The first essay was about Henrik Ibsen’s last days. In 2018, Under the Line celebrated 100 years and still contributes to SvD’s distinctive character – it is the only newspaper in Sweden that publishes an in-depth essay every day.
Consequences of the Kreuger crash
The 1920s were certainly a bright time for the newspaper but also became a countdown to the decade of depression and war – the 1930s. This had acute consequences for SvD when the match king Ivar Kreuger took his own life in March 1932. This triggered the so-called Kreuger crash when, among other things, it was discovered that the financier secretly, via decoys, had a majority share in Svenska Dagbladet.
A long battle began which ended with Ivar’s brother Torsten Kreuger losing ownership, editor-in-chief Helmer Key resigning and banker Carl Trygger taking over.
Due to what had happened as well as the dark political developments in Europe and concerns about what it could mean for the newspaper’s independence, Carl Trygger eventually had a consortium called together that formed the Svenska Dagbladet Foundation. This took over ownership in 1940, which at the time was a unique form of ownership in Sweden.
New tones, new house
During the 1930s, there had been internal criticism of what some employees perceived as apathy towards Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and censorship of the Nazi-critical voices that were raised. When Ivar Andersson was appointed editor-in-chief in 1940, he came to form a clear anti-socialist and anti-Nazi stance. He remained at the newspaper for a long time and led it to success in terms of circulation – from 75,000 copies in 1940 to 105,000 copies in 1955.
Understandably, the editorial office also grew and the premises in Klara became too small. The newspaper had for a long time tried to find a site inside the town customs but without success and in the early 1960s the construction of a new SvD building was started instead, in Marieberg, where it moved in 1962. But despite the increased circulation, the newspaper began to make more and more losses. There were several reasons for this: construction costs, a deteriorating advertising market and increased distribution costs. The trend continued throughout the 1960s and at the end of the decade it was so bad that SvD was threatened with closure.
The birth of ”Idagsidan” and ”Näringsliv”
Fortunately, the 1970s would mark a turning point. An important contributing factor was the establishment of the state press support, which came about after many newspapers were forced to close down during the 1950s and 60s. But also the formation of Handelsbolaget Svenska Dagbladet, where 43 companies bought shares, and the sale of the SvD building provided a capital injection. Important people were the newly appointed editorial secretary Buster von Platen, who reorganized the entire editorial team.
The content of the newspaper was also developed. In 1974, a new heading was presented in the columns: Idagsidan. Already in the 1930s there had been a Today column initiated by Ven Nyberg, which was mainly devoted to ”women and the home”. The new permanent department was created on the initiative of the journalist and newspaper founder Marianne Fredriksson and came to deal with outlook on life, social issues and philosophy and was something new in daily newspaper journalism.
In 1983, business got its own section ”SvD Näringsliv”, which would become one of the magazine’s flagships. For the first time in many years, SvD made a profit and the circulation had now reached over 200,000 printed copies.
A part of Schibsted
But as it became increasingly financially challenging to run a newspaper, several large and previously successful players shut down. During the 1990s, the situation also became difficult for Svenska Dagbladet, which in 1998 led to the Norwegian group Schibsted becoming the main owner and eventually coming to own the entire newspaper.
In 2010, SvD moved together with Schibsted’s other companies under the same roof – in Kungsbrohuset in the middle of central Stockholm. In the same year, the newspaper was once again named ”Newspaper of the Year” (Årets Dagstidning), the same award the newspaper had been awarded five years earlier.
During the 2010s, a new media climate emerged in Sweden. Readers, and journalism, went digital. Circulations of paper newspapers fell and more and more people received news on their mobile phones. SvD, as part of Schibsted, was well ahead in the digital transformation, while being able to continue developing the paper newspaper – which was so important to its readers.
In the fall of 2015, SvD Junior was launched, an ad-free news magazine for children and young people, which comes out with one issue a week. In 2016, SvD’s historical digital page archive was presented, which contains newspaper pages from the first issue on 18 December 1884 until today. The archive provides a unique insight into Swedish history and is the most comprehensive that any Swedish newspaper offers.
In 2019, extensive change work was initiated to bring the newspaper – and journalism – into a new era, a work that already two years later made SvD the ”Newspaper of the Year”.
”In order not only to succeed in maintaining the steering speed, but on the contrary to accelerate a thorough process of change, Svenska Dagbladet has revitalized the editorial work and its journalism in several different ways during the past year. A sense of purpose that impresses and that has also paid off on the last line,” wrote the jury at the time.
Today, Svenska Dagbladet is a modern media house, which with curiosity and courage breaks new ground to get more people to discover its journalism. Not least, the newspaper has made a big impression in audio, with several appreciated podcast ventures, such as the documentary podcast series ”Blenda” and the acclaimed documentary ”Dynastin”, a podcast series about the Stenbeck family, which in 2023 won both Stora journalistpriset, Schibsted’s Power of Journalism Awards and the Tidningsutgivarna’s prize for audio journalism of the year.
2024 was another milestone in Svenska Dagbladet’s history, when the owner company Schibsted was split into two companies and the news division became its own dedicated media group, fully owned by the Norwegian foundation Tinius.
Ellinor Skagegård
This story is written by Ellinor Skagegård is a cultural journalist and writer affiliated with SvD. She writes reports, interviews and reviews. Her book, ”Quelqu’une. Berättelsen om Märta Lindqvists otroliga liv” (Polaris förlag), tells the story of the young student Märta Lindqvist who in 1916 enters Svenska Dagbladet – and becomes one of Sweden’s foremost journalists. You can also read more about pioneering women at SvD in Fatima Bremmer’s ”Ett jävla solsken” a biography about Ester Blenda Nordström.
Editors-in-chief throughout history
Axel Jäderin, 1884–1888
Hjalmar Sandberg, 1888–1891
Dan Åkerhielm, 1891–1893
Gustaf E. Ericson, 1893–1896
Hjalmar G. Wallgren, 1896–1897
Helmer Key, 1897–1907
Gustaf Zethelius, 1907–1909
Helmer Key, 1909–1934
Carl Trygger, 1934–1940
Ivar Anderson, 1940–1955
Allan Hernelius, 1955–1969
Sven Gerentz, 1969–1973
Gustaf von Platen, 1974–1982
Ola Gummesson, 1982–1987
Hans L Zetterberg, 1987–1988
Lennart Persson, 1989
Bertil Torekull, 1989–1991
Mats Svegfors, 1991–2000
Hannu Olkinuora, 2000–2001
Lena K. Samuelsson, 2001–2013
Fredric Karén, 2013–2019
Anna Careborg, 2019–2023
Lisa Irenius, 2023–
