Editorial

This volume of Scandinavian Economic History Review features a special issue on Business and War. As summarised in the guest editorial by Erik Lakomaa, the topic, in spite of its importance, has received little attention in economic and business history. The editors of the Journal hope that this issue will serve to inspire greater scholarly interest. The articles in the special issue range from early modern armaments production (Luca Mocarelli and Giulio Ongaro) to Cold War political discussions (Maiju Wuokko), and from the impacts of wars to Scandinavian currency union (Gjermund Forfang Rongved) to the Atlantic copper trade (Nathan Delaney). This issue also includes an article by Hanna Vikström, Per Högselius and Dag Avango on the quest by the Swedish metal industry company Sandviken to acquire Turkish Chromium from the 1920s to 1940s and an article by David F. Björnsson and Gylfi Zoega on seasonal patterns of birth rates in Iceland. Björnsson and Zoega argue that seasonality of birth rates disappeared in the turn of the twentieth century as a consequence of migration to villages. Vikström, Högselius and Avango, in turn, discuss how the leading Swedish steel producer (Sandvikens Jernverk) secured its need for chromium ore during the interwar period and established together with other Swedish steel producers an unsuccessful source of chromium ore in Turkey.