Introduction: In the last decade, there seems to have been a boom in the marketing of popular history magazines in Sweden. At the turn of the millennium, there was only one such magazine; now more than ten can be found in news stands and stores. This raises many interesting questions, for instance, how history is presented to lay-people under commercial conditions, and what particular didactic means and strategies are used to make the content of the magazines appealing to the reader. There is no doubt that strategies used in these magazines seem to be successful to some extent, judging from the growing number of history magazines on the market and the numberof copies sold.
The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of the history magazine market in Sweden, with a closer look at the two biggest magazines that were the first on the Swedish market to have a content devoted entirely to history. Popular and typical historical subjects on the front cover will be examined in order to find out the kind of content that seems to be central and important for each magazine. The interpreted meaning will be analysed further by means of a comparison with the image presented by the magazines themselves. Hopefully this will facilitate an understanding of the selection of topics and design of the front covers and help us raise newquestions that can be analysed further in a future study.