Alebrewing has a long history in Sweden, predating written records. It is known, through old writings such as Havamal and others, that the Viking culture used brewing to produce ale and mead. Through the centuries since and up until the 19th century, brewing was mostly a matter of production for household needs. The beer was usually weak in alcoholic content and used as an everyday beverage. For celebrations and feasts, stronger "feast-beer" and potent mead was brewed. With the advent of industrialism, all this changed. As the cities grew, home brewing became impossible for most people, and so the Swedish brewing industry arose.
In the mid-19th century, a multitude of small breweries had grown into existence in all the larger cities of Sweden, and every town had to have at least one brewery, if nothing else for sating the local patriotism. In the beginning of the 20th century, a trend of consolidation with mergers and buyouts began, which culminated in the late 1970s and the beginning of 1980. This led to the formation of three large brewery conglomerates; Pripps, Spendrups and Falcon, and pushed the smaller breweries to the very verge of extinction. This lead to a strong stereotyping of the Swedish beers available as easily drinkable lagers, more often than not lacking in taste and character.
In the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, largely through consumer awareness, a new generation of small breweries began to grow alongside the large companies. These companies offer customers more in the way choice and many of the beers now produced in Sweden are of the very highest international quality, produced with carefully cultivated Brewing Yeasts (often imported from Germany, Belgium or Britain).
The success of the smaller breweries may be because the Swedish alcohol policy, which dictates that a monopoly (Systembolaget) sells all alcoholic beverages. In compensation for this (and the high alcohol taxes), Systembolaget maintains a very good selection of wines and beers and is also all but impervious to pressure from the large breweries to remove or reprice the smaller brands.
In becoming industrial workers and part of a highly industrialized community, their days were now ruled by clocks and the hum of machinery.
They were full-time permanent employees in the collar and textile industries, housekeepers, part-time employees in many local industries—prior to marriage and often after as well, boarding house managers, industrial homeworkers, and a dominant part of the clerical workforce in the 20th century.
The collar industry workers, at least 85 percent female, assembled, stitched, finished, washed, starched, laundered, and ironed millions of collars during the nearly century-long history of the industry.
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