Sven-Olof Svensson, 81, was feeling unwell and admitted to a hospital in southern Sweden on Christmas Eve, TheLocal.se reported.
His sister, 90, called the hospital to check on her brother and got the impression from a doctor that Svensson had died.
"According to my sister she rang up the doctors and talked about me and, as she understood it, I had died. It's clear that she was shocked," Svensson said.
Svensson's sister then wrote an obituary which was published in the the local Jonkopings-Posten newspaper on New Year's Eve.
The mistake was realized when Svensson's friend Lars Faltskog showed up to the hospital on Jan. 3 to collect Svensson's belongings and found him alive and on the mend in a hospital bed.
"You can see the humor in it. It's understandable to me that there may have been a mistake even if it was fatal in this case," Svensson told the Jonkopings-Posten.
When ask how it felt to read his own obituary in the newspaper, Svensson said, "you don't feel much."
