Svea were one of several Swedish companies that followed, hot on the heels of, Primus, who invented the first pressurised paraffin stove in 1892. Founded by Carl Nyberg, the company was later taken over by Max Sievert, though the brand name Svea remained. Yet another takeover in 1969 saw the brand acquired by Optimus and no doubt the saga will continue. Unlike Primus, Svea don’t have a date code stamped on them and the various takeovers have resulted in some stoves having a mixture of Svea, Sievert and Optimus, sometimes Primus, parts. An excellent website called Classic Camp Stoves and another called base-camp will help if you need more info. We reckon the Svea 121, King of Stoves, we have here in the collection is a fairly late version from around the 1960’s. We rescued it from our paraffin stove graveyard, cleaned it, put a Primus burner on top, found a few accessories and put them all in an old Primus/ Optimus tin to make a nice, hybrid addition to our collection.