Early Life
Dag Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping, Sweden, but spent most of his childhood in Uppsala. The fourth and youngest son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917, and Agnes Hammarskjöld (née Almquist), Hammarskjöld's ancestors served the Monarchy of Sweden since the 17th century. He studied first at Katedralskolan and then at Uppsala University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws and a Master's degree in Political economy. During this time he served for a year as the first Curator at Uplands Nation later moving to Stockholm.
From 1930 to 1934, Hammarskjöld was a Secretary on a governmental committee on unemployment. During this time he wrote his economics thesis, "Konjunkturspridningen" ("The Spread of the Business Cycle"), and received a doctorate from Stockholm University. In 1936, he became a Secretary at the Sveriges Riksbank and was soon promoted. From 1941 to 1948, he served as Chairman of the bank.
During this time Hammarskjöld also held political positions. Early in 1945, he was appointed an adviser to the cabinet on financial and economic problems. He helped coordinate government plans to alleviate the economic problems of the post-war period. In 1947, Hammarskjöld was appointed to a position with Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and in 1949 he became the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. A delegate to the Paris conference that established the Marshall Plan, in 1948 he was again in Paris to attend a conference for the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. In 1950, he became head of the Swedish delegation to UNISCAN. In 1951, he became a cabinet Minister without Portfolio. Although Hammarskjöld served in a cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats, he never officially joined any political party. In 1951, Hammarskjöld became Vice Chairman of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in Paris. He became the Chairman of the Swedish delegation to the General Assembly in New York in 1952. On 20 December 1954, he was elected to take his father's vacated seat in the Swedish Academy.
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