Scandanavian Silver ring, Swedish handcrafted in the 1940s, stamped “830 S”. The 830 standard of Silver of Sweden in the first half of the 1900s was similar to the Silver standards of virtually all the countries of continental Europe in that period: Scandanavian Silver was either 830 or 835 in 1000 parts purity; Germany worked on 800, or 80% Silver purity, and France and the Hapsburg realms the same. Only Great Britain worked on a higher Silver standard, 92.5 parts in 1000, 92.5%, the mark 925, a standard that had been in place for hundreds of years.
Europe began gradually moving to the 925 Silver standard after WWII, driven by the financial and cultural dominance of the U.S., where, as in all the “Anglo” countries, including Australia, the English Silver standard attained. By the 1960s virtually all northern Europe had shifted to the Sterling 925 Silver standard.
(It is worth noting that in India, since antiquity the greatest user of Silver on the globe, any item, be it jewellery or artefact, that contains at least 80% Silver is considered good Silver. That said, Mughal Silver coinage was of at least 90% Silver purity from the 1500s, and when the East India Company began minting its own coinage in the late 1600s it was in the same high Silver content.)