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In this essay I compare the description of the Thirty Years’ War in a number of German and Swedish encyclopedias published between 1854 and 2005. The essay is a historiographical research with focus on three areas; the description of the war background, the reason of the Swedish intervention in the war and the picture of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf with the consequences of the war and the peace of Westphalia. I want to analyze the differences and similarities in the way the history is being told in the German and Swedish encyclopedias. The research shows a transformation from a narrative, nationalistic, partial description with focus on individuals and specific events to a more analytical and objective description with focus on structures. Even if the Swedish encyclopedias show a greater change over the time, the encyclopedias from both countries represent a similar progress over time in the way the war is described. A change in the way the history is being presented can be observed somewhere in the middle of the 20th century. The way the war is described, tends to be more homogenous during the second half of the 20th century, while the national context is present in all encyclopedias. The writing of history is contemporary and it’s affected of the social landscape in which it’s written. All articles about the Thirty Years’ War are written out of a national perspective, which makes it the main dissimilarity between the German and the Swedish articles.