Birth records can be an excellent starting point in your research. Knowing an ancestor’s birth date and place can unlock access to many other archives. Additionally, birth records may include the names of parents and godparents, their residences, and occupations. The birth records may also note the parents’ ages and whether the child was born out of wedlock.

The majority of children born in Sweden before, or in the beginning of, the 1900s would get their surname according to the patronymic tradition. This has implications for how to search for records from their childhood in indexed databases. If possible, you should search for them by their first name and birth date only. As children, Swedes were recorded by their first name, or names, only – since their last name was a given if the father’s name was entered into the same record. Searching for a child’s first and patronymic last name will likely not bring you the search hits you want. 

Having that said, it should be added that there of course were families with fixed surnames as well, but that was uncommon. I find that indexation of birth records are not that prevalent. Searching for children in birth records most often entail going through the records page by page. Luckily they were most often written in chronological order, making it easier if you have a grasp of about when and where a child was born.