The Swedish Press – Digital Archive

The Swedish Press (Svenska Pressen) newspaper collection (1932-1985) is accessible via the Arca Digital Repository available at:

https://bchdp.arcabc.ca/swedish-heritage-british-columbia/swedish-press-svenska-pressen

The Swedish Press started in Vancouver in 1929 as a weekly Swedish-language publication, Swedish Press is still published today as a bimonthly, bilingual magazine. With over 1,800 editions covering Swedish community news and events from British Columbia and beyond, this digital collection is an important historical resource that can assist families, researchers, genealogists, and others to explore the rich history of BC’s Swedish community.  

Working in partnership with the British Columbia Electronic Libraries Network (BCELN) and Simon Fraser University Library’s Digitization Centre, almost 8,800 pages of the newspaper are now freely accessible online with searchable text. This was possible thanks to a grant from the BC History Digitization Program (BCHDP), a project of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC.

Since 1986, The Swedish Press has been published in a magazine format. Issues from 1986 until 2012 are currently being digitized, with expected completion in spring 2027. Our collection is extensive, but incomplete. Digital copies of additional newspaper issues may be found through the Swedish American Newspaper Collection hosted by the Minnesota Historical Society.

For an archive of issues published since 2013, please refer to the current publisher’s website (subscription required): https://swedishpress.com/category/archive/

You can browse editions by date, or search for specific names, places, words, or phrases throughout the entire collection. When doing a search, select “This Collection” (highlighted in dark blue), to limit results to the Swedish Press collection.

You can also filter results by selecting the newspaper from the options on the bottom left of the screen (see the area marked in red.