THE SWEDISH CHURCH REGISTERS AND THE DEMOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE 99 



the seventeenth century the death register's information swells out to really demos 

 graphical biographies, containing information respecting years of marriage and 

 widowhood, the numbers of children in different marriages, etc., of inestimable value 

 for the statistical studies of families of those times. 



It is true that in the Ecclesiastical Law of 1686 parish and removal registers 

 are presupposed, but as a foundation for the census, containing information re« 

 specting years of birth and age, they have certainly only appeared sporadically 

 until far into the eighteenth century, and then chiefly in connection with the 

 establishment of the Table Archives (Tabellverket). 



In 1749 the Swedish Table Archives were established, and since that time, 

 earlier than any other country, Sweden possesses continuous, never broken official 

 demographical statistics, based on a foundation of amply specified printed formulas, 

 which were to be filled in by the help of the parish registers. The most remark* 

 able innovation was the census table, with division of men and women into groups 

 of 5 years (during the five youngest years of life into 3 groups) — a division 

 perfectly identical with the one used in the mortality tables, and there in com* 

 bination with a large number of causes of death. Down to 1775 the table was 

 given in every 3 years and from that time to 1855 every 5 years. These censuses 

 can be characterized as the oldest in the world, in a modern sense. As long as 

 regular keeping of the parish registers was still lacking, they could most nearly 

 be characterized as living censuses, having as foundation the oral information given 

 by the heads of the households, and consequently suffering from all the imper* 

 factions such a census shows. The imperfections of the first censuses — especially 

 false information as to age in order to escape the capitation tax, which was not 

 paid by the oldest and youngest — has been vigorously emphasized by Per 

 Wargentin, whose name before everyone's is bound up with the Table Archives. 

 The effecting of a regular keeping of the parish registers, homogeneous for the 

 whole kingdom, was considered by Wargentin as the only possible foundation 

 for a fully reliable census. Such an arrangement was taken at any rate in the 

 diocese of Vasteras, where parish registers of nearly identical appearance to the 

 modern ones, and with printed formulas, were begun in and have been kept from 

 1774. Ever since that time up to the present, according to the degree in which 

 the keeping of the parish registers was closed, i. e. the data respecting removal 

 were properly recorded, one has complete uniformity in the demographical material. 

 On the foundation of these early parish registers, with the help and control afforded 

 by the death register's biographies, it is relatively easy to effect series of family 

 statistics, in which the children can be followed in any case till the customary age 

 of removal. The writer of this article has succeeded in effecting for some parishes, 

 even from the end of the 17th century, such continuous, fully representative series 

 of family statistics, with full information respecting the dates of birth of all the 

 children and of the deaths of all those deceased under 15 years of age. Especially 

 for the study of the secular changes of the frequency of re*marriage, and of the 

 marriage=fecundity, as well as of the mortality, male and female, among married 

 and children at different ages (especially in regard to severe epidemics, and more 

 important popular diseases, and in regard to the connection between child mor« 

 tality and the intervals between child-birth) such investigations are without doubt 



