The head of The National Archives, known as the Riksarkivarie in Swedish, works alongside of staff responsible for strategic issues, and overall coordination and development.

On October 18, 1618 Axel Oxenstierna, the Lord High Chancellor (Rikskansler) of the Privy Council, issued a Chancellor's Order to appoint a special secretary, along with two writers, to be responsible for the archive, thus creating the National Archives as an institution.

[1] In 1697 a fire at the Tre Kronor castle in Stockholm destroyed a large portion of the Archives, resulting in a severe loss of items and documents from the Middle Ages.

[6] One of Sweden's most famous books, The Silver Bible (Silverbibeln), or Codex Argenteus,[7] was purportedly thrown out the castle window to save it from the flames.

Regional archives in Lund and Uppsala both opened in 1903, Visby in 1905, Gothenburg in 1911, Östersund in 1928, and finally in Härnösand in 1935.

The department deals with questions about coat of arms design, flags and emblems and continuously produces new heraldic images for newly formed governmental bodies, counties, etc.

The creator of the image at the National Archives, Vladimir A. Sagerlund, made the news in Sweden over his staunch disapproval of the change.

[9][10] The oldest document in the National Archives (listed in 2005) is a parchment from a missal, written in England in the late 10th century.

When the Swedish army withdrew from the city, the commander Jacob De la Gardie collected these documents as useful evidence for the peace negotiations and brought them back to his quarters in Estonia.

[13][14] The National Archives is subject to open government, which means that the holdings in general are available to the public - including researchers and research-related individuals.

The subscription charge for the digital collections was removed on February 1, 2018, and the Archives has announced further plans to move towards open and free access.

[15] In 2018, the research foundation Acadia donation 30 million SEK to digitize all of the copyright-free Swedish newspapers preserved by the Royal Library (KB), estimated at 1,250 titles.

The regulations dictate how the documents should be created, organized, reported, deleted, stored, and submitted to the repository.