They have an excel sheet over the debt (but not GDP). No dramatic decreases in nominal debt in the 40ies or 60ies or 80ies, on the contrary nominal debt is flat during the periods of sharply declining debt/GDP. So increasing GDP it is. In the late 90ies and early 00ies on the otehr hand there is a 20-30% decrease in nominal debt.

Another interesting thing to note is how much of the debt is the governments debt to its central bank. Post war this goes up from around 5% just after the war to about 30% in 1970 and then declines to 0 in 2001. This could reflect the decrease and increase in bond holders power, at it is in their interest that the governmetn does not borrow from the CB, but instead the CB borrows to bondholders who borrows to the government.

Speaking of politics, I found the dramatic 50% decrease in 1779 in the excel sheet. In 1778 the CB holds 50% of the government debt, in 1779 this appears to have been written of as the debt is halfed, the govenremtn does not own the CB anything and there is a major seignorage loss (which is how I guess the CB balanced the books). This is in the same time as Gustav III's Russian war, though I fail to find any details.

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