the history of swedish snus

The Swedish snus we use today, operated as a pinch under the lip, has about a 200-year history. Many farmers had their own groves where they made snuff in self-made squalor warns. A couple of hundred years earlier, in the late 1400's, Christopher Columbus sailed ashore on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean and saw the natives suspend a powder through the nose. They called this nasal snuff. The powder consisted largely of tobacco and the sailors brought with them tobacco plants back to Europe, Portugal among other countries. In the 1500s The French royal house started using nasal snuff for medical reasons, the purpose was to relieve headache and it quickly became very popular since it appeared to work. It was the French Ambassador in Portugal, Jean Nicot, who took home the tobacco to Paris and the royal house. The popularity that followed made Nicot so associated with tobacco to such degree that our own Carl Von Linne named it after him.

Sweden was, as most royal houses at this time highly influenced by the French one and the nasal snuff made it to Sweden a bit into the 1600s. At first only used by the upper class, which handled nasal snuff in cans of precious metal. After several decades of import Sweden finally started growing its own tobacco in Skåne and Småland. I France the use of nasal snuff decreased rapidly in relation to the French Revolution. Its association with the upper class was too large and the bourgeoisie who took over power in France began to smoke cigars instead.

People in Sweden also changed their tobacco use around this time. The Swedish Snus was introduced and with a relatively cheap manufacturing it almost erased the use of nasal snuff and chewing tobacco completely. The production was initially managed by the farmers but soon it became industrialized and a number of manufacturers with related brands saw the light of day. General Snus, Röda Lacket and Ljunglöfs Ettan were the largest.

Production today differs little from that in the 1800s. Tobacco is dried and milled down. Then mixed with water, salt, soda and flavoring. At the end of the production The Swedish Snus is fermented in high temperature before being packed. The difference today is that fermentation process took half a year in the 1800s and that swedish farmed tobacco were used. Today tobacco from various parts of the world in used in production.