Background: My grandmother has told me that whenever her parents talked about WW1, her mother, who'd grown up up on a farm, would claim that things hadn't been so bad, while her father, who'd had to go door-to-door and ask for scraps, always ended the argument by saying "you don't know about that, because you always had food".
They are both right, in a sense.
There were a shortage of food, especially druing the cold Spring of 1917. However, people who lived on farms experienced less of it, as they were right on top of the food source and could always keep some for themselves, while city dwellers and labourers felt the pinch severely.
First, some background information.
During the 1866 reform, when the estates parliament had been abolished a sliding scale amount of votes nased in income and wealth had been implemented, and companies had votes based on stock value. Since muncipalities were small (around 3 000 muncipalities back then) and muncipalities collected a majority of taxes, handled schools, welfare and many other things, local industrialists or other rich people could have a very high degree of power. They could have the majority of the votes in their own muncipalities, which combined with their economical power gave them almost absolute power in their local muncipality.
By 1914, reforms had been enacted, but still a large part of the population was disenfranchised (anyone owing tax debt or indicted for a crime lost their right to vote) and gave men of means up to 400 votes.
The King was also claiming the right to appoint Prime Ministers without the approval of the parliament, and in February 1914 he had mobilised defence-friendly self-owning pesants for a March to Stockholm, after which the liberal government under Karl Staaff resigned and the King appointed the conservative Hjalmar Hammarsköld as Prime Minister.
When the war broke out, the government under Hjalmar Hammarsköld had declared Sweden neutral and stiffly held to the legal rigths of neutrals as defined by the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the London treaty of 1909. These rules prevented neutrals to trade in contraband with warring powers. However, food was not defined as contraband and Sweden continued to sell two of its pre-war top exports - pork and butter - to Germany.
In November 1914, the British declared the whole North Sea as a war zone and had all ships sailing there pass by a British port to have its cargo inspected. As Britain had placed a (theoretically illegal) blockade on food on Germany and Sweden sold food to Germany, Swedish ships carrying food for Sweden had their cargo seized on several occassions. The situation worsened considerably during the first two years of the war. The Swedish government had expected the war to end quickly (as did most governments early war) and did not introduce rationing until November 1916 and implemented it fully in January 1917. The German unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain also affected Swedish trading, sicne Swedish cargo vessels entered British ports for inspection, and in April 1917 the tricke of trade that did get through was cut off as the Entente and USA banned trade with neutrals completely. The situation was already bad because Hammarsköld himself had rejected a trade treaty with the British negotiated by Marcis Wallenberg, the industrial magnate and brother of the Foreign Minister Knut Wallenberg early 1917.
Sweden was not self-sufficient in food, being dependent both on grain imports (roughly 1/3 of the grain consumed before the war was imported) and fertilisers. The food situation was made worse by the fact that the government left the gold standard and attempted to print its way out of the economic troubles that the blockade and war caused. Inflation went from 1,3% 1914, 14,9% 1915, 13% 1916, 26,2% 1917 to 47% 1918. Since exports of food continued, with the Germans buying a lot of butter and pork at very high prices, the situation was made even worse by peasants feeding grain to pigs in order to make a higher profit by selling pork.
The price of pork and butter, which were staples of Swedish labour class diet rose to astronomical levels. In 1907, a Swede ate on average 126kg of meat per year, which was down to 26kg in 1917. 46kg of butter yearly in 1907 was down to 3kg 1917.
And here is the main point to your question - even if later scientists have argued that there were no famine, that people still got at least passable amounts of calories and that the replacement of pork and butter with vegetables, beans and potatoes were actually and improvement in the diet and thus the health of labourers in the cities, people felt like the quality of their food dropped signigicantly, that they could not eat what they considered proper food and that prices went up.Wwidespread unemployment, as Swedish industry suffered from a lack of raw materials, especially chemicals needed for the wood pulp and paper industry and the match industry as well as coal and coke for heating, electricity and steel production, also created a problematic situation, as there were no welfare or unemployment benefits.
Soon Hammarsköld was referred to as Hungersköld.
The situation came to a perfect storm during Spring 1917 due to cold weather.
Back then, potatoes, which was the main staple of Swedish diet, was stored in a stuka out on the field. Basically, a well-drained ditch or extra deep furrow was covered with hay, potatoes, turnips or other root vegetables placed on top, hay added on top and then the whole thing was covered with earth, creating an impromptu earthen cellar, keeping the potatoes over winter. However, as long as the temperature was below freezing, the potatoes could not be dug up and transported by cart or railway to the cities, as they would freeze during transport. As Spring 1917 was very cold throughout March, the potatoes remained in the field.
An acute lack of food in the cities was the result. There was bread, but the rations for it was low, and people could not switch potato coupons for bread coupons.
Continued below.
