Sweden’s oldest international parish, Svenska Sofiaförsamlingen, is in Paris, France. The Swedish church presence in Paris dates back to 1626, when Professor Jonas Hambraeus at the Paris Academy began to gather Swedish and German Lutherans for worship services. The parish services were both in Swedish and German. On Sunday, worship services were usually held first in Swedish and then in German. Knowing this, it is easy to understand why the oldest books in the church’s archive are written in German as the above image out of one of the books from the 1600’s shows.
The Swedish parish in Paris existed from the end of the 1600’s to 1806 as an embassy church. The parish did not have a permanent location for services and moved around between the diplomatic envoys’ different residences. At the time of Napoleon Bonaparte’s crowning in 1806, the parish minister received an order to leave the country. For the years up to 1806, there are three volumes available on ArkivDigital: 2 parish registers (församlingsregister) volumes AV: 1-2 (written in German) and a marriage book for the years, 1764-1806. A large portion of the marriage book is written in French.
In the autumn of 1858, the embassy preacher Thor Frithiof Grafström was sent to Paris. At the time, there was the Union between Sweden and Norway and Grafström’s commission was to establish a Swedish-Norwegian parish. The volume, Svenska Sofiaförsamlingen i Paris AI:1, includes various types of documents from the Swedish-Norwegian parish in Paris during the years 1859-1863.
During the period 1863-1877, there was no Swedish priest in Paris. Since 1877 when Emil Flygare became the minister in Paris, the Swedish church presence in Paris has continued without interruption. The parish received its current name in 1878 when the first church, Sofiakapellet, was consecrated and named after the Swedish queen, Sofia of Nassau. The current Swedish parish church, Sofiakyrkan, was consecrated in 1913.
Most of the volumes for the Sofia parish in Paris are after 1877. These volumes include household examination/congregation books, migration records, birth, marriage and death books along with many other types of documents.