Swedish famine of 1867–1869

Because early ice and snow disturbed communications, it was hard to transport and distribute emergency food supplies to the starving areas.

In the autumn of 1867, the government of Sweden granted emergency loans to the Northern counties, and the county governors were given permission and encouraged to establish emergency committees (Swedish: undsättningskomitté) to collect the funds needed from volunteers and philanthropists.

[3] The local city councils were criticized for enforcing the principle of help in exchange for work so far that the most needing were left without help.

"[3] The authorities recommended that the starving people should eat Bark bread made of lichen rather than expect great amounts of flour in relief help.

Some of the local emergency committees, such as the one in Härnösand, mixed the flour with lichen and had it baked to bread before distributing it.

[3] The authorities were exposed to harsh criticism from the press because of how ineffectively the relief funds from the emergency committees were distributed, and on which terms.

[3] This is supported by the fact that the year of 1867 was in fact a successful year for the Swedish cereal exports: the largest of the farms and estates in Sweden exported their harvests, mostly oats, to Great Britain, where it was used for horse drawn buses in London.

[3] There was also a fact that authorities had elected to impose a more strict interpretation than the Poor Care Regulation of 1847 would have allowed, thus making the famine worse than it needed to be.

Illustration of starvation in northern Sweden , Famine of 1867–1868.
A Charity play organized in favor of the famine victims, Sweden, 1867.
Caricature from the paper Fäderneslandet 14 December 1867, criticizing the unjust distribution of the relief help committees: the relief help are given first to county governor, and are thereafter given first to the wealthy officials and rich farmers and last, when only an handful is left, to the poor people truly in need.