The laws on prostitution in Sweden make it illegal to buy sex, but not to sell the use of one's own body for such services. Procuring and operating a brothel remain illegal. The criminalisation of the purchase of sex, but not the selling of one's own body for sex, was unique when first enacted in Sweden in 1999. Since then, this "Nordic model" for sex trade legislation has been adopted in several other nations.
History of prostitution in Sweden
Prior to the 18th-century Prostitution is not mentioned in any law texts in Sweden in the Middle Ages, and was thus not formally a crime. However, under the influence of the church, sexual acts outside of marriage were criminalised for both sexes regardless of circumstances, which also affected prostitutes. The normal punishment for extramarital sexual relations was fines or (if the accused was unable to pay them) pillorying, whipping, or other disciplinarian physical punishments within the Kyrkoplikt.Taussi Sjögren, Marja, Rätten och kvinnorna, från släktmakt till statsmakt i Sverige på 1500-och 1600-talen, Malmö 1996. The ban on extramarital sex was the same in cases of actual prostitution: when the activity of the madam Sara Simonsdotter was exposed in the capital in 1618, she, her staff and clients were all sentenced to various punishments for fornication in accordance with the ban of extramarital sex.Göransson, Göte (1994). Gustav II Adolf och hans folk [Gustavus Adolphus and his people] (in Swedish). Höganäs: Bra böcker. .
Eighteenth century
The earliest law to explicitly ban prostitution was in the Civil Code of 1734, where procuring and brothel-keeping were punished with whipping, imprisonment and forced labor, and prostitution at a brothel with forced labor.Sweriges Rikes Lag. Gillad och Antagen på Riksdagen Åhr 1734
From 1724 onward, unmarried women in Stockholm with no certification asserting that they were supported by a legal profession, a personal fortune or by a sponsor guaranteeing their economic support, could be arrested for vagrancy and placed at the Långholmens spinnhus to prevent them from supporting themselves "indecently", which was frequently used against prostitutes."Centralfängelset Långholmen" (in Swedish). Stockholm.se. Retrieved 11 October 2014. High-class courtesans, who met their clients at the theater or opera and received them in the client's home or their own, were protected from the police by a certificate of sponsorship by a client, or by having an official legal profession on paper, usually as an actress or singer.Gunilla Roempke (1994). Gunilla Roempke. red. Vristens makt - dansös i mätressernas tidevarv. Stockholm: Stockholm Fischer & company.
There were no brothels in a formal sense in Stockholm or Sweden prior to 1839. During the 18th-century, the brothels, such as the famous elite brothel Platskans jungfrubur, were in actuality simply a temporary locale, often the home of a procuror, where the procuror arranged a meeting between a potential client and a prostitute, rather than a house where a group of prostitutes lived together and received clients on a permanent basis.Lennartsson, Rebecka (2019). Mamsell Bohmans fall: nattlöperskor i 1700-talets Stockholm. Stockholms stads monografiserie, 0282-5899; 265Kriterium, 2002-2131; vol. 17. [Stockholm]: Stockholmia förlag. Libris mxlhr9rdk9gmvlv3. ISBN 9789170313165 There were also the famous horbal ("whore ball"), were procurers arranged a ball between several potential clients and prostitutes in a temporary local such as an inn: one such ball was arranged in a wing at the Stockholm Royal Palace in secrecy in the spring of 1768, when the royal court was absent, and caused a scandal when it was exposed.Lennartsson, Rebecka (2019). Mamsell Bohmans fall: nattlöperskor i 1700-talets Stockholm. Stockholms stads monografiserie, 0282-5899; 265Kriterium, 2002-2131; vol. 17. [Stockholm]: Stockholmia förlag. Libris mxlhr9rdk9gmvlv3. ISBN 9789170313165
In 18th-century Stockholm, there were concerns that coffee houses that were managed by women, financed by former rich lovers, were in fact masked brothels, as were often pubs and bars, where the waitresses were suspected to be prostitutes.Svanström, Yvonne, Offentliga kvinnor: prostitution i Sverige 1812-1918 [Public Women: Prostitution in Sweden 1812-1918], Ordfront, Stockholm, 2006 (Swedish) These were often raided by the police, who occasionally forced the female staff to subject to physical examination to prevent the spread of sexual diseases, but this was done without the permission of any specific law.
Nineteenth century
In 1812, a law was introduced which allowed compulsory medical examination and treatment of anyone suspected of carrying a sexual disease, a law that was in practice mostly forced upon women in the capital suspected by the police of being prostitutes, which lead to protests of harassment. In common with many other European countries that practiced the Regulation system, Sweden delegated prostitution control to local authorities from 1833 onwards.Yvonne Svanström, "Criminalising the John: A Swedish Gender Model?", in Joyce Outshoorn, ed., The Politics of Prostitution: Women's Movements, Democratic States, and the Globalisation of Sex Commerce, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
Between 1838 and 1841, an attempt was made by the local authorities in the capital of Stockholm to establish state control over prostitution, and thereby sexual diseases, through an experiment with private licensed brothels, London and Stadt Hamburg, but without success.
From 1847,Yvonne Svanström, "Offentliga Kvinnor i Offentliga Rum: Prostitutionens Reglementering i 1800-talets Stockholm (Public Women in Public Spaces: Regulating Prostitution in the 1800s in Stockholm)", in Christina Florin and Lars Kvarnstrom, eds., Kvinnor på gransen till medborgarskap: Genus, politik och offentlighet, 1800-1950, Stockholm: Atlas Akademi, 2001 most prostitution was illegal, but tolerated and regulated, including medical examinations and secure hospitals for venereal diseases. Brothels were also illegal, but persisted under police surveillance. Other regulations controlled areas frequented by prostitutes and the clothes that they could wear. This policy was both gendered and intrusive, Yvonne Svanström, Policing Public Women: The Regulation of Prostitution in Stockholm 1812-1880 , Stockholm: Atlas Akademi, 2000 typifying the "necessary evil"Anders Kullberg, "Om prostitutionen och de verksammaste medlen till de veneriska sjukdomarnes hämmande, med särskildt afseende fästadt på förhållandena i Stockholm" (On prostitution and the most efficient ways of fighting venereal diseases, with special concern to the situation in Stockholm), Svenska Läkaresällskapets Nya Handlingar, 1873 (2), V.1. framing of prostitution typical of Western European discourse.
An abolitionist office, the Svenska Federationen, was established in Sweden in 1878, That is, abolition of regulation: The British, Continental and General Federation and eventually protests, including women's movements in the 1880s, Yvonne Svanström, "Through the Prism of Prostitution: Conceptions of Women and Sexuality in Sweden at Two Fins-de-Siècle" , Nordic Journal of Women's Studies, 2005 (13): 48-58 and collaboration with the anti sex trafficking organization Vaksamhet,Från vit slavhandel till trafficking: En studie om föreställningar kring människohandel och dess offer. Hallner, Ann. Stockholms universitet, Humanistiska fakulteten, Historiska institutionen. 2009 (Svenska) Ingår i: Historisk Tidskrift, ISSN 0345-469X, E-ISSN 2002-4827, Vol. 129, nr 3, p. 429-443 led to the commissioning of an inquiry in 1903, reporting in 1910.Yvonne Svanström, Offentliga Kvinnor: Prostitution i Sverige 1812-1918 Public Women: Prostitution in Sweden 1812-1918, Stockholm: Ordfront, 2006 The resulting proposals met vigorous dissent from feminists and liberals,Anna Lundberg, "Passing the 'Black Judgement' - Swedish Social Policy on Venereal Disease in the Early Twentieth Century", in Roger Davidson and Lesley A. Hall, eds., Sex, Sin, and Suffering: Venereal Disease and European Society since 1870, London: Routledge, 2001 who succeeded in removing gendered prostitution clauses from the proposed legislation dealing with contagious disease.
Twentieth century After 1918, control of prostitution was a national responsibility, under two laws, the Lex Veneris (1918),Lex Veneris (Contagious Diseases Act) 1 January 1919 (till 1966) and the Vagrancy law (1885), dealing with disease and unemployment respectively, since money earned through prostitution was considered illegal.Yvonne Svanström, "Prostitution as Vagrancy: Sweden 1923-1964", Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention , 2006 (7): 142-163 These were now gender-neutral in language, but, as elsewhere, not in practice,Lucy Bland, "'Guardians of the Race' or 'Vampires upon the Nation's Health': Female Sexuality and its Regulation in Early Twentieth Century Britain", in Elizabeth Whitelegg, ed. The Changing Experience of Women, Oxford: Robertson, 1982 and the new vagrancy provisions were condemned as even more coercive by women.Tomas Soderblom, Horan och Batongen: Prostitution och Repression i Folkhemmet Whores and Batons: Prostitution and Repression in the People's Home, Goteborg: Gidlund, 1992 This was the Scandinavian Sonderweg (Special Way).Peter Baldwin, Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930. Cambridge: Secker and Warburg, 1999 Six official commissions considered the issues between 1923 and 1964. In practice, women charged under the vagrancy provisions were apprehended for prostitution in what was still coercive care as social control.
The three commissions of the 1920s (1923, 1926, 1929) depicted prostitution as a dangerous predisposition requiring correction, as opposed to mere detention, a moral analogue to the danger of spreading disease. The 1929 report presaged contemporary legislative developments by referring to public education and the role of demand. Women were divided, some calling for abolition of the law pointing out it was gendered in practice, and others supporting the then-popular social hygiene concept of sterilisation of the unfit. These discussions raised the idea that men who sought out sex workers were a danger to all women. Health professionals shifted from arguing about contagion to arguing morality.
This pathologised theory became the dominant discourse from the 1930s onwards for dealing with uncontrolled sexuality in a period which was characterised by social medicalisation.Roddy Nilsson, Kontroll, Makt och Omsorg: Sociala Problem och Socialpolitik I Sverige 1870-1940 Control, Power and Care: Social Problems and Social Policies in Sweden 1970-1940, Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2003 This was also an era associated with an attempt to eradicate venereal disease by mandatory tracing, treatment and consent to behavioural change (Lex Veneris).Anna Lundberg, “Paying the Price of Citizenship: Gender and Social Policy on Venereal Disease in Stockholm 1919-1944” , Social Science History 2008 (32) 215-234 This formed part of a package of legislation that defined citizenship in terms of desired normative behaviour, including ‘honest labour’,Those deemed without legal means of support were termed försvarslös a social welfare state based on the priority of the State over individual freedomsUlf Olsson, Drommen om den Halsosamma Medborgaren—Folkuppfostran och Halsoupplysning i Folkhemmet The Dream of the Healthy Citizen - Popular Education and Health Education in the People’s Home, Stockholm: Carlsson, 1999 to promote the goals of folkhygien (public hygiene). Citizenship became a hierarchical attribute depending on adherence to these norms.Christina Florin and Lars Kvarnstrom, eds., Kvinnor på Gransen till Medborgarskap: Genus, Politik och Offentlighet, 1800-1950 Women on the Verge of Citizenship: Gender, Politics and Publicity, Stockholm: Atlas Akademi, 2001