Swedish Press is a monthly magazine for Swedish-Americans and Swedish citizens living in the United States and Canada, as well as for North American businesses with links to Sweden. The magazine contains articles in both English and Swedish on subjects related to Swedish culture and heritage, as well as contemporary events and trends in Sweden. It also features exclusive interviews with interesting people of relevance to the Swedish diaspora.

The only Swedish paper still in existence in Canada, Swedish Press, was established in Vancouver in 1929 as the Swedish-language Svenska pressen. It started as a weekly broadsheet at a time when there were hundreds of Swedish newspapers in North America. Today, only the Swedish Press and the bi-monthly Nordstjernan tabloid in New York are left in all of North America. Swedish Press has subscribers in every US state and every Canadian province.

It was two Finland Swedes, Helge Ekengren and Paul Johnson, who founded Svenska pressen. Ekengren provided space in the same building as his travel agency, and the first issue was dated 24 January 1929. The four-page weekly gave equal space for news from Sweden and Finland. When Ekengren left in 1933, Matt Lindfors became editor, assisted by Rud Manson, who had already worked there for three years. 

Financial difficulties dogged Svenska pressen, despite inventive appeals and refinancing schemes. In 1936 Lindfors sold the paper to Seattle’s Svenska posten, which printed his weekly Vancouver page. Less than a year later he got it back and changed the name to Nya svenska pressen (The New Swedish Press). In 1943 it was reorganized as a private company under the name Central Press Limited, having purchased its own printing equipment. A board of directors was elected, and shares sold to pay capital expenses. At this time Lindfors was busy elsewhere, and Einar Olson took over as editor for five years, followed by Rud Manson until Lindfors returned in 1961. 

The paper faced another crisis in 1984 when the editors, professional journalist Jan Fränberg and his wife, Vicky, decided to return to Sweden. “The problem,” lamented Jan, “was that the subscribers were dying.” At this point Nya svenska pressen was one of only five surviving Swedish newspapers on the continent. 

While it was true that original subscribers were dying, it was also true that most of their children and grandchildren could not read Swedish and did not have strong feelings towards Sweden. Immigration had virtually halted during the years from 1930 to 1950 because of the Depression, the Second World War, and reconstruction in Canada. When North America became a favoured destination once again, many immigrants had already learned English at school as a compulsory subject. The loss of subscribers, coupled with escalating printing costs, sounded the death knell for hundreds of ethnic newspapers in North America. 

Sture Wermee, who had worked as typographer and sometime editor since 1952, was determined that Nya svenska pressen should survive. Along with Swedish consul Ulf Waldén and others, he scouted around for an editor and found Anders and Hamida Neumüller. The couple agreed to try it for a year as a monthly, with the backing of the Swedish Press Society. They switched the name to Swedish Press/Nya Svenska pressen, adopted a smart magazine format, and started producing the paper on a Macintosh computer. The Swedish Charitable Association, which raised money through bingos, funded purchase of the new equipment and the first issue came out in January 1986. Continuing to contribute were journalist Ann-Charlotte Berglund, cartoonist Ernie Poignant, and Sven Seaholm, the paper’s poet laureate. New contributors included Mats Thölin with sports, Adele Heilborn with news from Sweden, and Roberta Larson with reports from the Swedish Canadian Rest Home. 

Editor Anders Neumüller credited Canada’s multicultural policy and Vancouver’s Expo ’86 with generating enough advertising revenue to see Swedish Press through its critical first year. He also came close to meeting his goal of doubling the number of subscribers. Since then, Swedish Press has become an international resource, keeping readers informed in an interesting way about happenings in Canada, Sweden and the United States, very little of which is included in the mainstream media. 

At the end of 2012, Claes and Joan Fredriksson purchased Swedish Press from Anders and Hamida Neumüller who retired and moved back to Sweden after a successful run of the magazine for 27 years. Claes and Joan revamped the magazine and began producing a full-colour edition adding new sections such as immigration and integration, innovation and sustainability as well as interviews with global Swedes. 

In 2016, Swedish Press received an award for “Excellence in Editorial Concept Art and Visual Presentation” from the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada.

After eight successful years, Joan and Claes decided it was time to pass the torch to another local North American based publisher.

The current owners are a Swedish-Canadian family based in Ottawa, Ontario. Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Kajsa Norman is a Swedish-born journalist and non-fiction author with a passion for preserving and enhancing Swedish culture. Her husband and co-publisher Matthew is a Canadian-born energy and tech entrepreneur whose grandfather, Robert Saarukka, emigrated to Canada from Swedish-speaking Finland in the early 1900s to work as a pianist on the paddle-wheelers plying Kootenay Lake. Joining them to attract the next generation of young Scandinavian expats and descendants is their 14-year-old daughter and youth fiction author Noelle. 

History text adapted from Elinor Barr’s Swedes in Canada: Invisible Immigrants, University Toronto Press 2015 with permission from the author.