The aim of this one-year master thesis was to examine the principles of arrangement used by the Swedish Royal Office archive from about 1540-1878, and how the principles of arrangement have corresponded with the information needs of that rules the Swedish Royal Office archive. The following theoretical premises were important: Berndt Fredriksson's empirical archival science, JBLD Strömberg's concepts of archive systems and Randolph C. Head's concepts of mirroring. Two questions have been examined. What connections is there between the major reorganizations of the Swedish Royal Office archive, the process for governance of Sweden / the Royal Office, access to / control over archival documents, information needs, the political situation, and changes in how the archive was arranged and inventoried. What sources of inspiration have those responsible for the reorganizations had regarding the reorganizations? My source material consisted primarily of archival inventories. In this inquiry I have used a case study in which document and literature studies were conducted. During this study I have discovered that several principles of arrangement was in use simultaneously during the examined time period. This suggests either that older ideas regarding inventory labor were present at the same time and influenced the inventory labor or that the "archivist" during this time period had great freedom to choose between different principles of arrangement. Arrangement by geographic location were used during the entire time period. The archival inventories arranged by this principle has evolved from larger descriptions over geographic places to titles in Latin over countries. It also seems likely that the countries of this archival inventories represented Sweden's foreign relations. Mirroring has been detected between the reasons for the reorganizations, major political conflicts internally and externally, changes in the governance process, the user groups of the archive, the information needs and archival inventories. Mirroring has also occurred between the principles of arrangement and information access and needs. There are several available sources of inspiration to the reorganizations and hence the principles of arrangement.