Sweden Population Registration Files

= Population Registration =

In Sweden, registration of the population journeys back hundreds of years. Registration began with the tax registrations, and then continuing on with the church registers and the household examinations. All of these records are ways in which the populace was organized. Initially, the registration was mostly for tax purposes. However, in present-day Sweden, many aspects of life are affected by the use of the modern population registration.

Information on one’s identity, family relationships, and residence are some of the basic questions for registration. If one has an ancestor or relative still in Sweden in the 20th century to the present, one can imagine how beneficial this record could be to one’s research.

In 1860, the church began sending their information on births, marriages and deaths to civil authorities. This truly is the beginning of the modern system. As time progressed, civil marriage records included the birth dates of the bride and groom (making them especially helpful when establishing a relationship.) in 1947, personal identification numbers were established as a means of keeping track of the populace. These numbers replaced the previous use of birth dates on the civil registration records.

100 years after the civil registration started, the records began to be computerized. Personal identification numbers became especially helpful during this period as a means of identifying each person in the country, especially when surnames were quite commonplace.

In the modern system of Population Registration, each person is given a "Personal Indentification Number," known as a Personnummer in Swedish. To learn more about this number, please see the referenced page.

The Tax Office (Skatteverket) is the current population keeping system.

Please see also: How to obtain a Personal Registration File.