Recently, three books appeared that presented the history of Swedish agriculture —one over agriculture in the very long term and two on the interaction between agriculture and forestry in the twentieth century. Taken together, the three books sketch the contours of rich research that has been done on Swedish agriculture in archeology, economic history, and human geography. All three books were initiated through The Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry.

The book edited by Janken Myrdal and Mats Morell is the most ambitious one from an economic history point of view. It is the condensed version of a large research project that resulted in five extensive volumes, published in Swedish 1998–2003. In chronologically organized chapters, it covers Swedish agricultural history from archeological reconstructions of the neolithical beginning of human civilization on the Scandinavian Peninsula up to present-day integration of household farming into modern life.

Some themes central to Swedish agriculture recur in the different chapters. One such theme is the integration between arable and livestock farming and its close connection to forestry as a basic condition for Nordic agriculture. The forest provided necessary and readily accessible fuel as well as a number of commodities for exchange, while the supply of grazing land further supported the mix of arable and livestock farming. The great mixture in farming activities—including crafts during long winter seasons—was in its turn one precondition for another theme, the strong position for the peasantry or for the peasant farmer. The variation in activities was comparatively efficiently organized within the household of the peasant farmer —a characteristic feature all through the agricultural history of Sweden. Feudalism was not precluded but it was limited to areas of open plains, while the peasantry kept an independent position in the Diet. Another recurrent theme is how agriculture depended on technology to make farming viable in the harsh climatic conditions of Sweden. Above all, it is the dependence upon a fairly rich supply of iron, which for long was one of the few comparative advantages of Swedish agriculture. Widespread use of equipment such as sickles, scythes, iron-edged spades, and ploughs are essential to the story early on, and over time the equipment was also complemented by the animal draught power supplied from livestock farming. Iron and animal power became complements in labor-saving technologies.

The complementarity between iron and agriculture has many facets. One is of course the technological impact from iron made equipment. A falling price of iron, for example, was (as Carl-Johan Gadd emphasizes) as important for the agricultural transformation in the first half of the nineteenth century. Another is the contribution that ironmaking in turn made in increased demand for inputs such as fuel and transportation and in its role in supporting an exchange economy, since iron bars were early on an item in peasant tax payments earned in exchange for deliveries of food or labor to the industrial districts. Yet another and wider aspect of the complementarity is the double basis that iron and agriculture provided for the Swedish political entity and organization. In the age of the Vikings, the center of the realm was already located near the nexus of interchange between the districts of agriculture and iron in the Mälaren valley—first at Uppsala and afterwards at Stockholm.

The external dynamism of the Viking age is set against a background of an evolving exchange economy with agricultural development due to increased investment in iron tools, which were provided by a more specialized iron production, and at the same time a restructuring of the realm with centralization of political power. These perspectives in the chapter by Ellen Anne Pedersen and Mats Widgren stand in stark contrast to the analysis by Myrdal of a second period of Swedish external expansion, namely the Great Power period in the seventeenth century. According to Myrdal, the Swedish imperial expansion around the Baltic was linked to increased feudal repression and a redistribution of income from the peasantry to the military state that led to economic stagnation and even increased misery among the population in the later part of the century—a negative development that was broken only by the relatively peaceful conditions of the eighteenth century.

There are however some basic similarities between the Viking age and the Great Power period. One is certainly the political reorganization of the realm with centralization of power. In the seventeenth century, Stockholm expanded greatly and became the first urban agglomeration in Sweden to reach a European level. Another and even more important similarity is the development in metal manufacturing, since the seventeenth century saw the rise of a modern iron and copper industry. The state supported investments into iron works and foundries, in particular through immigration of skilled smiths and capitalists from the Continent. Without doubt, the metal industries were central to the new military power of the Swedish state, by supplying both equipment and export income. Estimates of total iron production indicate a large increase, close to a tenfold rise over the seventeenth century. Furthermore, the supply shift seems to have been very vigorous that ought to have had effects upon the whole economy. Thus, price series of bar iron, major agricultural products, and wages indicate a very substantial fall in the relative price of iron, consistently from the late sixteenth century onwards. Given the positive link between agricultural productivity and iron in mind, the question naturally arises whether it is therefore correct to characterize the seventeenth century as a period of stagnation.

More generally, there is one weakness in the book's long term analysis, namely the lack of systematic economic time series or aggregate quantifications as part of the analysis. Such series are rare but there are data on e.g., prices, wages, and trade that could be brought in and supplement the very rich but largely qualitative material that is presented in the long history of Swedish agriculture.

To those who want to delve more deeply into twentieth-century Swedish agriculture and forestry, the two Royal Academy books offer much material and reading. The Atlas gives a very lucid presentation with great many charts, maps, and photographs in the fashion of an encyclopedia. There are numerous thematic essays, including surveys of the dramatic events of the twentieth century by the human geographer Ulf Jansson and the economic historian Ronny Pettersson. All material in the Atlas is, however, presented without references to sources, which makes it less suitable for further research.

The Atlas is accompanied by an anthology that should provide more in-depth reading of twentieth-century trends in different areas of agriculture and forestry—primarily in the fields of economic history and human geography but also involving ecological, literary, and even artistic aspects on the sectors. Central to economic history are themes such as ownership and land markets (Mats Morell) and property prices (Jan Bohlin and Svante Prado), but the very width of the anthology with 30 essays provides something for almost everybody.