Snus history: when was snus invented?

When was snus invented?

There’s no single invention date, because Swedish snus changed form more than once. The short answer, from Swedish Match’s own history and the Snus and Match Museum (Snus- och Tändsticksmuseum) in Stockholm:

• 1637: the first time snus is named in Sweden, in a customs document. It was nasal snuff.
• Early 1800s: Swedes start placing moist snus under the lip. This is the habit we now call snus.
• 1822: Ettan, the brand Swedish Match calls Sweden’s oldest snus brand, is launched.
• 1973: the first portion-packed snus, the direct ancestor of every pouch since.

Snuff arrives in the north

According to the Snus and Match Museum, tobacco reached Sweden at the end of the 1500s; the earliest record is from 1601, when Stockholm customs noted that tobacco and pipes had been brought into the country. Swedish Match dates the first mention of snus in Sweden to 1637, in a customs document recording snus brought from Porvoo in Finland.

That early snus was nasal snuff, sniffed from small boxes. In the 1700s it became a must among the aristocracy, and snus cans in gold and silver were status objects. Tobacco growing took off too: by the end of the 1700s, Swedish Match records tobacco being grown in about 70 Swedish towns. The museum’s own phrasing captures the change that followed, from the luktsnus (sniffing snus) of the 1600s and 1700s to the munsnus (mouth snus) of the 1800s. Swedish uses the same word for both.

From the nose to the lip

Swedish Match links the turn to politics: nasal snuff, an upper-class habit, had an upswing under Napoleon but went out of fashion after his fall. In Sweden, consumers switched in the early 1800s, “maybe somewhat earlier,” to placing a pinch of snus under the lip. Many farmers grew their own tobacco and made their own snus, grinding it in coffee grinders or home-carved snus mills. The museum describes the 1800s as the era when working men took up moist snus, and the snus industry boomed.

1822: Ettan and the industrial recipe

The brand history begins in Stockholm. In 1822 Jacob Fredrik Ljunglöf launched his No. 1 quality, which became Ettan (“the one”). The Centre for Business History (Centrum för Näringslivshistoria) describes how, with help from the chemist Jacob Berzelius, Ljunglöf began pasteurising his snus, using a simple recipe of tobacco, salt, water and potash with no added flavourings. Swedish Match says the method cut preparation time from six months to one week. Other 19th-century makers included Petter Swartz with Röda Lacket and J.A. Boman with General, a brand still sold today.

Moist snus spread with the Swedish emigrants too. Swedish Match notes that slightly more than a million Swedes emigrated across the Atlantic between 1846 and 1930, taking the habit with them.

1915: the monopoly years

In 1915 the Swedish state created a tobacco monopoly, AB Svenska Tobaksmonopolet, to raise money for national defence and the first national pension system, and all tobacco factories were nationalised. Snus sales hit a record in 1919: 7,000 tonnes, about 1.2 kg per person. After that, cigarettes won ground, and snus slowly declined. The sales monopoly ended in 1961 and the manufacturing monopoly in 1967, the same year the first round snus can was launched, replacing the oval paper can introduced in 1915.

1973: portion snus

Swedish Match records that snus began to regain popularity in the late 1960s, as reports documented the health risks of smoking. In 1973 the first portion-packed snus was launched in Sweden: pre-measured doses in small pouches. The museum dates the first popular portion snus to 1977. Either way, the portion is the template for every pouch that followed, including the tobacco-free all-white pouch: the portion pouch and the round can were both in place by then.

1992 and 1995: Europe closes, Sweden stays open

Council Directive 92/41/EEC of 15 May 1992 required the member states of the European Community to prohibit “tobacco for oral use,” with effect from 1 July 1992. Sweden joined the EU on 1 January 1995, and Article 151 of its Act of Accession grants it a derogation from the ban. The current Tobacco Products Directive keeps both: snus is legally sold in Sweden and nowhere else in the EU. What that means for UK and EU readers today is on what is snus.

White portions and the all-white generation

White portion snus is a later variant of the tobacco product. In 2006 Swedish Match released Ettan in white portion format, describing a production technique that gives portions a whiter, fresher look with the same moisture content as ordinary portion snus, and a pouch that runs less. That’s where “white snus” started: as a description of tobacco snus.

The tobacco-free pouch came next. Swedish Match calls ZYN “an all-white pouch product” and its first nicotine pouch without tobacco, and launched it in the US before Sweden. With no tobacco, such pouches sit outside the EU and UK oral-tobacco bans, so the Swedish format could finally travel, minus the tobacco. The name went with it, which is the confusion our white snus explainer untangles.

Timeline at a glance

The heritage in your hand

Swedish makers remain central to the tobacco-free category. One example from a retail catalogue: White Fox All White Portion (slim format) is made by Swedish Smokeless, formerly GN Tobacco. Format, size and the round can are inherited from portion snus; what changed is the filling. If you’re curious how Swedish-made pouch brands compare with the rest of the market, nicopodstore has a guide to Swedish and non-Swedish pouch brands. The product-by-product comparison of the two categories is in snus vs nicotine pouches.