Why Coffee Was Once Banned And Feared In Sweden

Coffee first appeared in Sweden circa 1674 but for decades went largely unnoticed. Eventually, the Swedes realized they had been sitting on a perfectly fine beverage the whole time.

Coffee drinking started to spread around the turn of the 18th century. This was in part due to the fact that the rich loved coffee. Since it was a trendy drink, those less wealthy also wanted to partake of this heavenly liquid. And once it spread widely enough, the government took notice.

There was also a royal edict enacted in Sweden in 1746 to prevent “misuse and excesses” of tea and coffee. At first, I assumed this was in reference to some sort of bloody civil disturbance, but really it’s just folks drinking hot stuff. That’s kinda funny!

Believe it or not, if you were caught without paying the coffee tax, not only would you be fined, but your cups and dishes would be confiscated by officials!

But how long did it take the authorities to stop banning coffee? In Sweden, coffee was forbidden on five separate occasions. Five. This took place across several different reigns of the Swedish crown and lasted a total of about seventy years, from the 1750s to the 1820s.

Coffee was also a foreign luxury, and as such importing it drained the country of money. The basic concern was really an argument of trade balance, but it’s a lot more legitimate to decry a public health risk than to shout in the streets, “we’re annoyed about the trade balance.” So the decrees are written, and the public health risk it is.

In Sweden, officials with an interest in the beer and wine trades quickly realized that if everyone started drinking coffee, the domestic beer and wine industries would face massive losses.

Officials worried that coffee houses threatened the stability of the government, fearing that groups of people drinking coffee together might plot to overthrow it. The authorities were nervous about more than just coffee: coffee houses were places where people loafed and gossiped. And this part, at least, was entirely true.

To some, coffee was a religious issue, even an un-Christian one; a foreign thing that only sinners drank. So, as legend has it, Pope Clement VIII was called upon to settle the argument. He supposedly tried a cup for himself, and couldn’t bear to forbid something so good! He blessed it. And so it stopped being called the devil’s drink.

Gustav III’s hatred of coffee had a family history: his father, Adolph Frederick, had issued a decree in 1760 banning the drinking of tea or coffee. That decree drew on a 1715 French treatise warning of caffeine’s dangers.

According to a popular legend, when Gustav III ascended to the throne, a scientific study was devised to try to prove that coffee is extremely dangerous for public health. The king was deeply convinced of his opinion and wanted some empirical evidence in support of it. Gustav III would surely never let go of his coffee crusade.

It’s true that testing on identical twins removes some complicating factors, which was a smart choice. But Gustav’s ethics in doing the experiment leave much to be desired, since the only people available to him were two identical twins convicted and sentenced to death, whose consent wasn’t really an issue given they had no power to refuse.

Twins sentenced to death were once offered life imprisonment if they agreed to drink a certain beverage each day for the rest of their lives, coffee for one and tea for the other.Would they take the deal? An easy decision for most people, assuming they were happy to live of course, as it’s hardly a choice when pitted against execution!

Imagine being the coffee twin; you’re going to have some seriously crazy bathroom habits. Imagine being the tea twin… good grief that’s going to be a lot of bladder control. Apparently these two remarkable committed gentlemen were ordered to drink three pots of their assigned beverages a day… FOR LIFE!

In order to make the monitored trial more scientifically plausible, Gustav asked two doctors to observe the brothers and take note of what happened. It has been described, fairly loosely, as an early controlled study.

Ironic ending: as the legend goes, the experiment continued despite Gustav III being assassinated during a masquerade ball in 1792 (he was shot and died days later). So he never got to see the outcome of his study.

The two prisoners outlived the man who ordered the experiment and the two doctors charged with monitoring it; as far as we know, the twins, still drinking caffeine several pots strong each day, are hale and hearty. One of those jokes only life can tell!

Interestingly, the tea drinker reportedly died first, at age 83, which would have undercut Gustav’s theory entirely. Luckily for us, the public’s love of coffee outlived both Gustav and his theories.

We do not actually know the date on which the coffee-drinking twin died, since no surviving record ever noted it. He simply outlived everyone connected to the experiment.

Historians still wonder whether the experiment took place, because no official documents from 18th-century Sweden confirm it took place. Perhaps the story was an invention, embellished to make Gustav’s hatred of coffee seem even stronger. But I like the thought that, when there is smoke, there is fire!

This content was created with the help of AI.