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Notary Public Services

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Notary Public Services

A U.S. Consular Officer may act as a U.S. notary public for documents to be used in the United States. Some documents to be used in the United States can be signed before a foreign authority competent to notarize or legalize signatures. 

If you need to sign a document in the presence of a notary public, and a U.S. notary public is NOT required, you can look in the Swedish yellow pages under "notarius publicus" to find the notarial official nearest you.

For those cases in which the requester in the U.S. requires that the document(s) be signed in the presence of a U.S. consular officer, the American Citizen Services Unit is open between 9 and 11 am, Monday through Friday, except for U.S. and Swedish holidays. Please bring a photo identification along with the fee of $30.00 for each notarial. Personal checks and postal money orders ("postanvisning") are not accepted. No appointment is necessary. 

Please note that the American Citizen Services Unit will be closed for business on Friday, November 27, 2009, due to renovations.

Apostille - Authentications
An "apostille" is a certificate issued by a designated authority in a country where a treaty called the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement for Legalization of Foreign Public Documents applies. See a model Apostille.  

Both the United States and Sweden are currently signatory parties to this Convention. This means that the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm cannot authenticate any U.S. or Swedish documents. For a full text of the Convention, please see www.hcch.net. For a list of all signatory countries, please click here. 

The Hague Legalization Convention is a multilateral treaty, the main purpose of which is to facilitate the circulation of public document issued by a country party to the Convention to be used in another country party to the Convention.

U.S. Embassies and Consulates in countries participating in the Hague Conventions are thus not equipped or authorized to provide Apostille Certificates (certifications and authentications) of U.S. documents.  

Swedish documents
The Government of Sweden has chosen Swedish notaries public as their officials, who are designated to certify the authenticity of Swedish public documents, seals and signatures. Under the Convention, the standard certification provided to authenticate documents is called an apostille.

We suggest that you look in the yellow pages under "notarius publicus" to find the officer nearest you to authenticate Swedish documents for use in the U.S. or another foreign country. 

American documents
Authentication (certification) of U.S. documents destined for use in countries that are parties to the Hague Convention (such as Sweden), should be certified by one of the officials in the jurisdiction in which the document has been executed. There are three levels of U.S authorities competent to issue an Apostille certificate depending on what jurisdiction executed the documents:

    1) State, territories and Other jurisdiction:

    Each state and other jurisdiction in the U.S have an office that can issue an Apostille certificate. For listings of competent office in individual states and other jurisdictions, please visit click here.

    2) Federal Executive and Administrative Agencies:

    You must obtain the seal of the federal agency that issued the document before the U.S. Department of State Authentications Office can affix an Apostille to the document. Please see the U.S. Department of State Authentication Office website for more information.