Sweden P-61 20 Kronor 1991-1995 VF—Selma Lagerlöf—Nils Holgersson

The large-format predecessor to Sweden's iconic Lagerlöf 20 Kronor — issued from 1991 to 1995, this earlier note shares the same beloved imagery but is notably scarcer, demonetized a full decade before its smaller successor.

Front

• Colors: purple-violet engraving; pale green-yellow background; gold and blue accents
• Portrait: Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940), Swedish author and Nobel laureate
• Vignette: Lagerlöf driving a horse carriage through the Värmland landscape
• Text excerpt: brief passage from Gösta Berlings Saga (1891)
• Lettering: SVERIGES RIKSBANK / TJUGO KRONOR

Back

• Colors: pale green-yellow background; purple-violet engraving; blue accents
• Vignette: passage motif from The Wonderful Adventures of Nils — Nils Holgersson and Mårten the Goose flying over the flatlands of Scania (Skåne), southern Sweden
• Lettering: TJUGO KRONOR

Other Characteristics

• Varieties: you may receive any variety:
  • P-61a — 1991, Per Borg & Bengt Dennis
  • P-61a — 1992, Staffan Burenstam Linder & Bengt Dennis
  • P-61b — 1994, Staffan Burenstam Linder & Urban Bäckström
  • P-61b — 1995, Kjell-Olof Feldt & Urban Bäckström
  Note: Year of issue is the first digit of the 10-digit serial number.
• Catalog numbers: P-61; Numista N#205675
• Watermark: Two vertical portraits of Selma Lagerlöf
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 130 × 72 mm
• Issuing entity: Sveriges Riksbank (National Bank of Sweden)
• Demonetized: 31 December 2005
• Currency: Swedish Krona (SEK, 1873–date)

The Nobel Laureate on Paper

Selma Lagerlöf was born in 1858 in Värmland — the very landscape depicted on this note's front. She grew up on the family estate of Mårbäcka, surrounded by the forests and lakes that would later fill her fiction. When she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1909, she became the first woman ever to do so. She used the prize money to buy back Mårbäcka, which had been sold to pay debts. The horse carriage scene on the front is drawn from Gösta Berlings Saga, her debut novel — a wild, romantic tale of a defrocked priest and the women who shape his fate.

Nils and the Goose

The reverse depicts one of the most iconic images in Swedish children's literature: young Nils Holgersson, magically shrunk to thumb-size, soaring over Skåne on the back of Mårten the Goose. Lagerlöf wrote The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–07) on commission from the Swedish school board — it was meant to be a geography textbook. Instead, it became a beloved classic translated into over 40 languages. The flatlands of Skåne below are rendered with cartographic precision, a nod to the book's original educational purpose.

The Larger, Earlier Note

This large-type note was the first Swedish banknote to feature Selma Lagerlöf, introduced in 1991. At 130 × 72 mm it is noticeably bigger than the 1997 small-type redesign, and it was demonetized in 2005 — a full eleven years before its successor. Fewer were printed and fewer survive in collectible condition, making VF examples increasingly hard to find at this price point.

About Sweden

• Origin of name: From Old Norse Svíþjóð — "people of the Svear," a Germanic tribe that dominated the region in the early medieval period
• Capital: Stockholm (city pop. ~1 million; metro ~2.4 million)
  • Origin of name: From Old Swedish stock (log) + holme (islet) — "log islet," referring to a small island where a log boom once stood at the mouth of Lake Mälaren
• Population: ~10.5 million (UN 2024) — comparable to Michigan or North Carolina
• Area: 450,295 km² (173,860 mi²) — slightly larger than California
• GDP per capita (PPP): ~$65,000 (IMF 2024) — among the highest in Europe
• Main exports: machinery, motor vehicles, paper products, iron and steel, chemicals, pharmaceuticals
• Borders: Norway (west/north), Finland (northeast); maritime borders with Denmark, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia
• Official/spoken language: Swedish; recognized minority languages include Sami, Finnish, Meänkieli, Romani, and Yiddish
• Ethnicities: Swedish (majority); significant communities of Finnish, Sami, Syrian, Iraqi, and Somali origin
• Memberships: United Nations (1946); European Union (1995); NATO (2024 — among the most recent members); OECD; Nordic Council (founding member, 1952)
• Sovereignty: Unified Kingdom of Sweden established ~12th century; union with Norway dissolved 1905; constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy

Own this note and hold the original Lagerlöf — the larger, earlier, and scarcer of Sweden's two 20 Kronor tributes to its greatest literary voice.