Husmodern (Swedish: The Housewife) was a women's magazine which was published in Stockholm, Sweden, between 1917 and 1988.

Husmodern
CategoriesWomen's Magazine
FrequencyWeekly
Founder
  • Thora Holm
  • Elsa Nyblom
Founded1917
Final issue1988
Company
  • Husmodern
  • Åhlén & Åkerlund
CountrySweden
Based inStockholm
LanguageSwedish
ISSN0018-8026
OCLC1027568168

History and profile

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Husmodern was started in Stockholm in 1917 and was published by a company with the same name.[1] The founding organization was Martta.[2] The subtitle of the magazine was de svenska husmödrarnas tidning (Swedish: the Swedish housewives' newspaper).[1] Its founders were Thora Holm and the journalist Elsa Nyblom.[3] The latter was also the first editor of Husmodern.[1] The magazine was acquired by the Åhlén & Åkerlund company in 1920.[1] Following this its subtitle was redesigned as tidskrift för hemmet och kvinnan (Swedish: magazine for the home and the woman).[4] A pattern department was also formed belonging to the magazine after its acquisition by Åhlén & Åkerlund[5] which became part of Bonnier Group in 1929.[3][6] The magazine delivered a supplement entitled Stil-mönster (Swedish: Style-Patterns) which contained samples of the Swedish patterns between 1941 and 1982.[5]

Husmodern came out weekly throughout its run.[1] The magazine was among the popular periodicals in the country[7] and reached its highest circulation in 1970 selling 290,000 copies.[8] Its title was Nya Husmodern (Swedish: Modern Housewife) from 1982 to its closure in 1988.[1]

Husmodern had a Finnish edition entitled Emäntälehti.[2] Some issues of Husmodern were archived by Carolina Rediviva library in Uppsala, Sweden.[9]

Audience, content and editors

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In the initial years Husmodern targeted rural women.[4] The target audience of the magazine was middle-class housewives living in cities from 1938.[9]

The coverage of Husmodern was expanded from 1920, and it contained many appealing advertisements.[4] It frequently featured life of Carl Emil Pettersson, a Swedish adevnturer, in the 1930s.[10] In the period between 1930 and 1950 the first ten of its total 60–80 pages included the advertisements of household appliances, make up products, food, language courses and bikes.[8] One of the frequent topics was dressmaking patterns during the World War II period.[3] In addition, Husmodern was one of the Swedish publications which featured news materials provided by the Swedish Intelligence Agency during the same era.[11] The magazine also included the following sections: recipes, home decoration, news, and short stories.[3]

One of the editors-in-chief of Husmodern was Fanny Hult.[2] Another editor-in-chief was Amelia Adamo who had worked as a reporter for the magazine.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f "Husmodern". Libris (in Swedish). Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  2. ^ a b c Merle Weßel (2018). An Unholy Union?: Eugenic Feminism in the Nordic Countries, ca. 1890-1940 (PhD thesis). University of Helsinki. pp. 41, 61. hdl:10138/233107.
  3. ^ a b c d Gunilla Törnvall (2022). "Culottes and Warm Pyjamas". Mémoires du livre. 13 (1): 4–5, 9. doi:10.7202/1094129ar. S2CID 255874317.
  4. ^ a b c "Litteratur: Tidskrifter". Shenet (in Swedish). Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  5. ^ a b Gunilla Törnvall (2023). "From Paper Patterns to Patterns-on-Fabric: Home Sewing in Sweden, 1881–1981". Costume. 57 (1): 58. doi:10.3366/cost.2023.0245. S2CID 257563729.
  6. ^ a b "Historik". Bonnier Magazines & Brands (in Swedish). Retrieved 14 September 2023.
  7. ^ Liselotte Eriksson (2014). "Beneficiaries or policyholders? The role of women in Swedish life insurance 1900–1950". Business History. 56 (8): 1344. doi:10.1080/00076791.2014.894980. S2CID 154916598.
  8. ^ a b Katarina Hedman (2021). An economic room of one's own: A study of commercial femininity in Swedish beauty advertising 1930–1950 (MA thesis). Uppsala University. pp. 29, 31.
  9. ^ a b Ingrid Stigzelius; et al. (2018). "Kitchen concerns at the boundary between markets and consumption: agencing practice change in times of scarcity (Husmodern, Sweden 1938–1958)". Consumption Markets & Culture. 21 (4): 352–365. doi:10.1080/10253866.2018.1462174. S2CID 148937359.
  10. ^ Anette Nyqvist (2018). "The Travelling Story of Pettersson in the Pacific". In Stefan Helgesson; et al. (eds.). World Literatures. Exploring the Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Exchange. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. p. 267. doi:10.16993/bat.v. ISBN 978-91-7635-076-8. S2CID 188612485.
  11. ^ Emil Stjernholm (2023). "A Rain of Propaganda: The Media Production of the Office of War Information in Stockholm, 1942–1945". In Fredrik Norén; Emil Stjernholm; C. Claire Thomson (eds.). Nordic Media Histories of Propaganda and Persuasion. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 124. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-05171-5_6. ISBN 978-3-031-05171-5.