Thorbjörn Fälldin

Nils Olof Thorbjörn Fälldin (born 24 April 1926) is a Swedish politician. He was Prime Minister of Sweden in three non-consecutive cabinets from 1976 to 1982, and leader of the Swedish Centre Party from 1971 to 1985. On his first appointment in 1976, he was the first non-Social Democrat Prime Minister for forty years and the first since the 1930s not to have worked as a professional politician since his teens.

Biography

Fälldin grew up in a farming family in Ångermanland, and in 1956 he and his wife, as a newlywed young couple, took over a small farm. However, the farming authorities did not approve the purchase, as the farm was regarded too small and too run down, and so refused to provide the usual farm subsidies. Fälldin felt deeply humiliated by that treatment and fought the authorities all the way.

This fight led him into the youth branch of the Swedish agrarian party Bondeförbundet, which in 1958 changed its name to Centerpartiet (the Centre Party). He and his family maintained their farm throughout his political life, and when he resigned from politics in 1985 he immediately returned to it.