Historic Epidemics: Sweden and the Black Death

In case you missed the news, Sweden hasn’t been following the same pandemic measures that most of the rest of the world is undertaking. Elementary and middle schools are still in session, bars and restaurants are open and filled with people, and retailers are open for business. Not surprisingly, their death rates are the highest in Scandinavia, especially among the elderly. Over 50% of Sweden’s Covid-19 deaths are of the elderly population, and it seems like that is acceptable to at least one person, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist. Listen to his explanation here if you’re interested.

Sweden	244
Norway	37
Finland	37
Denmark	76
United States	184

The Covid-19 pandemic isn’t first time Sweden has taken a different approach to a worldwide disease. In the first wave of the Black Death in the mid-1300s, Sweden was a special case in several ways. .

The Black Plague was first recorded on the northern shores of the Caspian Sea (although most scholars believe it originated in China) in the year 1346. In just two short years, it had hit Italy, worked its way through what is now Spain and France, then into Britain by 1349. In 1350, the plague was encroaching on Scotland. Sweden was next and they knew it was coming.

Accounts of the Black Death in the cities of Italy and France relate how the friends and family of the sick abandoned their loved ones even before they died. Many family members refused to care for those who were ill or even give them a burial for fear of contracting the illness.

Also in most European cities and towns, when the dead started piling up, small groups and families tried to outrun the disease by fleeing to the countryside. This response sometimes worked–if no one in the family was infected and they remained apart until the pestilence had passed.

In Sweden, though, things were different.

In the beginning of the plague in Sweden, friends and family continued to care for the sick and to gather at the home of the dead to pay their respects, as well as discuss their inheritance and participate in the burial. This sped up the spread of the disease. When townspeople finally decided to distance themselves, they didn’t leave in family units but as a whole group — meaning the entire town together. More people meant more chance that someone was carrying the Great Pestilence along with them, and as a result these fleeing groups — often down to the last child — died en route or soon after settling into a new area.

Sweden was also different in that in the 1300s it was not as Christianized as most of the other European countries. Some some pagan practices–including human sacrifice– were reestablished during the first wave of the Black Death. Unfortunately, scholars have found accounts of children or young women buried alive in an attempt to save towns and villages from devastation.

Since we’re talking about Sweden, it’s interesting to note that Scandinavia developed a culturally unique folktale response to the Black Death. Stories were told of the “plague hag” who carried a broom (and the plague) with her from house to house. If she swept at the front door, everyone in that house would die, but if she knocked on the door with her broomstick, only one person would die per knock.

There are also versions of folklore in which the plague comes as a young boy and girl together. The girl came with the broom, where death cleaned house. The boy came with a shovel, where some people were spared. Nowhere else was the plague anthropomorphized into story form like in Scandinavia.

Despite their varied response to the disease, the death toll in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia by the end of the Great Pestilence was roughly the same as the rest of the known world — between 50% and 60% of the population.

We have yet to see if modern Sweden’s more lenient approach to Covid-19 will prove to be better, worse, or the same as the social distancing and quarantine that most of the rest of the world is following.

Read my the other posts on Historic Epidemics:

Parrot Fancier’s Fever: Part 1 — how my daughter and her quail keeping led to learning of a 1930s epidemic

Parrot Fancier’s Fever: Part 2 — how a 1930s epidemic led to the creation of the National Institute of Health

Historic Epidemics: Malaria in the Vatican 1623  — How the indigenous people of South American saved millions of lives

Historic Epidemics: The Spanish Flu didn’t come from Spain — how politics and the media put the spin on Influenza

Historic Epidemics: The Plague Doctor — how the strange costume of the plague doctors may have actually protected them from the disease