The newspaper Karjalainen was the first Finnish publication to publish The Phantom. The strip debuted on October 1, 1940 titled “Fantom” and was published until 2011. After it was cancelled, readers demanded that the strip would be reinstated. The editor announced that The Phantom would return in 2012, which it did with a special 16-page Phantom supplement on April 14, 2012.
The supplement included the entire daily strip story “The Phantom At Sea”, which was the next story in line to be published when the strip was cancelled in 2011. The supplement also featured articles about the strip and interviews with longtime Phantom fans. Since May 1, the strip is published daily in Karjalainen again.
On May 25, the weekend section of Nya Wermlands-Tidningen had a Phantom cover and included a two-page article about The Phantom, which featured an article with recently retired Fantomen editor Ulf Granberg. This was due to Granberg being guest of honor at the Carlstad Comic Con that weekend. Nya Wermlands-Tidningen used to publish the Phantom daily strip until 2006.
The first Swedish newspaper to publish the Phantom as a daily strip was Svenska Dagbladet, which debuted the strip on June 8, 1942. The Phantom first appeared in Sweden two years before that, in the weekly Vecko-Revyn. However, while Vecko-Revyn used the direct translation “Fantomen”, Svenska Dagbladet used a completely new title for the strip: “Dragos”. The origins of this unique Swedish name for the Phantom are still unclear and debated. Most newspapers in Sweden (and some in Finland) would use the “Dragos” name after that, while “Fantomen” was used by Vecko-Revyn, the Fantomen Christmas Albums and the Fantomen comic book. It was not until 1980 that Svenska Dagbladet changed the name of the strip to Fantomen (and other newspapers have kept the name Dragos long after that). On June 8, 2012 Svenska Dagbladet celebrated 70 years of uninterrupted publishing of the Phantom strip with a four-page article about the strip in the Culture section, which also had a Phantom cover to mark the event.