Persson

Per is the Swedish form of Peter, the apostle's name worn down to a single northern syllable, and Persson is nothing more than his son. Pehrsson, Pehrson, Pärsson and Persohn are the same name in older or dialect hands rather than separate families.

A patronymic on its own placed a man inside a household and nowhere else. What made him findable in a parish register, a district court or a riksdag roll was the tag Swedish usage put after it: the farm, the village or the parish he sat on. Anders Persson på Rankhyttan, Johan Pehrsson i Lövö, Matts Persson i Utsund. The name gave the father and the tag gave the ground. Once in a while the traffic ran the other way: Johan 'Lill-Jan' Persson, forest warden and court huntsman around 1700, gave his nickname to Lill-Jansskogen and Lill-Jans plan.

Anders Persson på Rankhyttan, in Vika parish, is the earliest bearer of the name with a story attached to him, and it comes down as tradition rather than as record. He was a bergsman, a man of the mining country, and Swedish accounts put him among the foreground figures in the tales told about Gustav Vasa's adventures in Dalarna. He is said to have known the fugitive Vasa from Uppsala, where the two had studied at the same time in their youth, which is why Vasa is supposed to have made for Rankhyttan at all.

What he did next is the human part of it. He did not dare keep his old fellow student under his roof and sent him on. Some months later he joined Vasa anyway, and stayed loyal through the risings around Peder Sunnanväder and the daljunker and through the Västergötland revolt.

The Swedish Riksdag met as four estates and the fourth was the peasants' own. The frälse, the nobles and the clergy, were a class defined by exemption from ordinary tax and by representation in the diet; the farmer had the representation without the exemption. Sweden never knew serfdom, so a skattebonde held his own ground and paid his own tax on it, and that made him a party to the realm rather than a possession of somebody else's manor.

It is why so many Perssons appear in the political record long before any Persson could vote in a modern election. Mats Persson (1657-1739) sat in the peasant estate, and so did Anders Persson i Burlöv (1802-1880). Nils Persson i Ringstorp (1798-1871) rose to be its talman, its speaker. When the four-estate Riksdag held its last sessions in 1865 and 1866, before the reform of that year swept the arrangement away, Johan Persson i Årsta, Olof Pehrsson i Gråsätter and Per Persson i Valnäs were all sitting in it.

Johan Pehrsson, born in Gustafs parish on 2 August 1700, was the son of a farmer called Pehr Månsson and held his father's kind of living, a tax farm in the village of Enbacka. He was parish clerk and nämndeman as well, and he kept the copper books and the charcoal accounts of the Falu bergslag as kopparskrivare and kolkommissionär. Elected to the peasant estate in 1734, he spent the rest of his life defending his right to be in it: farmers objected that he was a ståndsperson, a man of rank, and so no true peasant, and at the riksdag of 1755-1756 he was shut out of the estate altogether while still holding a string of its committee places.

He sat on the mining deputation, the secret deputation and the secret committee across six riksdags and never settled into a party. The Dalarna rising of 1743 nearly finished him: trying to calm the Dalecarlians at Leksand he was beaten and shut in the tjuvkista, the thieves' box, and he went back to face them a second time. His last election was voided for want of the district judge's signatures on his credentials, and the royal council prosecuted him under the placard of 1751 against political assemblies. Imprisoned for questioning in March 1756, he died on 16 April after eating dinner with his son in the cell. The autopsy said a stroke, the rumour said poison, and the Collegium medicum found nothing to remark on.

Johan Pehrsson i Lövö, born in Vårdö parish on 14 November 1731, took over his father's farm Mansas while still young and set about clearing and breaking new ground on it. He became known in his own district as the man who brought in new methods and new implements, the mullplog and the torvkam. Åland sent him to the peasant estate at the riksdags of 1778-1779 and 1792, and between sessions he kept going back to Stockholm on the islands' business, pressing for the freeing of the firewood shipping and for relief from the duty of carrying the post.

Matts Persson i Utsund, born in Folkärna parish on 19 June 1754, took over his father's farm there in 1774 and was elected to the estate in 1786. He returned for the riksdags of 1800 and 1809-1810, sat on the taxation committee and then on the constitutional and secret committees, and was a commissioner of the National Debt Office from 1800 to 1808. He died in December 1809 with the riksdag still sitting.

Knut Pehrsson was born in Mjällby parish on 17 August 1748, son of Per Persson, a farmer who had sat in the riksdag before him, and he took over the family land at Hörby when he married in 1774. He was made a nämndeman in the Lister district court in 1783 and sat for the district at the riksdags of 1789-1792. On the commission on rural husbandry in 1793-1794 he drew up a scheme for the improvement of agriculture and was given a royal silver medal for it, and in 1800 he published it as the Åkerbrukscatechism, a help for countrymen: farming instruction cast in the one form every Swede already knew by heart.

Influence bought him powerful enemies, Carl Axel Wachtmeister and a number of clergymen among them, and he was accused, probably wrongly, of involvement in the Tavelin balance case. His voters returned him in 1800 and in 1809-1810 and he was refused his seat both times, then expelled from the estate. He left Mjällby in 1809 for a farm at Ramlösa, was elected once more in 1812 for Luggude härad, and was voted out again.

Sigfrid Lorentz Persson Gahm, born at Helgaryd in Gårdsby on 7 September 1725, went up to Uppsala in 1744, became a clerk in the Krigskollegium in 1750 and taught drawing on the side. Poor and sickly, he spent every free hour of a small official's life in the archives, copying historical and biographical documents out by hand. His collections ran to twenty volumes of Acta litteraria 1541-1773, seventeen of biography, twelve of Archivum smolandicum and eleven on forbidden books, and Uppsala University Library bought the lot in 1804. He is remembered chiefly for what he saved of other people's work.

The farm tag outlived the four estates. Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp (1883-1954) carried the old habit of pinning a place to a patronymic into the twentieth century, led the Bondeförbundet, the farmers' party, and became prime minister. Beside him stand plainer men: Carl Persson i Stallerhult of the lantmannapartiet, Sven Persson i Appuna, a farm labourer, and Johan Persson i Tidaholm, a matchstick worker who kept the old shape of the name.

The name went where the country went. Erling Persson (1917-2002) was an entrepreneur and company director, Karl-Johan Persson (born 1975) is chief executive of Hennes & Mauritz and Olof Persson (born 1964) was chief executive of AB Volvo, and Markus Persson, born in 1979, is a game developer. Underneath it is still the same word: somebody's father was called Per.