The traditional engineering industry is still a major source of Swedish inventions, but pharmaceuticals, electronics and other high-tech industries are gaining ground.
Tetra Pak
Tetra Pak is a Swedish–Swiss multinational food packaging and processing company with head offices in Lund, Sweden, and Pully, Switzerland. The company offers packaging, filling machines and processing for dairy, beverages, cheese, ice cream ...
was an invention for storing liquid foods, invented by
Erik Wallenberg
Erik Wallenberg (25 December 1915 – 18 October 1999) was a Swedish engineer. He is credited for inventing the Tetra Pak tetrahedron packaging in 1944.
Career
Wallenberg had initially planned to join the Army as an officer, but fell ill during m ...
.
Losec, an ulcer medicine, was the world's best-selling drug in the 1990s and was developed by
AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca plc () is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includin ...
. More recently
Håkan Lans
Anders Håkan Lans (born 2 November 1947 in Enskede) is a Swedish inventor. He holds two patents:
* a memory controller for a framebuffer: "Data processing system and apparatus for color graphics display". Framebuffer with memory controllers had ...
invented the
Automatic Identification System, a worldwide standard for shipping and civil aviation navigation. A large portion of the Swedish economy is to this day based on the export of technical inventions, and many large multinational corporations from Sweden have their origins in the ingenuity of Swedish inventors.
Swedish inventors held 47,112 patents in the United States , according to the
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...
. As a nation, only ten other countries hold more patents than Sweden.
Combined, the public and the private sector in Sweden allocate over 3.5% of GDP to
research & development
Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...
(R&D) per year, making Sweden's investment in R&D as a percentage of GDP the second-highest in the world. For several decades the
Swedish government has prioritised scientific and R&D activities. As a percentage of GDP, the Swedish government spends the most of any nation on research and development. Sweden tops other European countries in the number of published scientific works per capita.
In 2009, the decisions to construct Sweden's two largest scientific installations, the synchrotron radiation facility
MAX IV Laboratory
MAX IV is a next-generation synchrotron radiation facility in Lund, Sweden. Its design and planning has been carried out within the Swedish national laboratory, MAX-lab, which up until 2015 operated three accelerators for synchrotron radiation re ...
and the
European Spallation Source
The European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS) is a multi-disciplinary research facility based on the world's most powerful pulsed neutron source. It is currently under construction in Lund, Sweden. The ESS Data Management and Software Centre (DMSC) ...
(ESS), were taken. Both installations will be built in
Lund
Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, across the Øresund, Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipali ...
. The European Spallation Source, costing some SEK 14 billion to construct, will begin initial operations in 2019 with construction completion scheduled for 2025. The ESS will give an approximately 30 times stronger neutron beam than any of today's existing neutron source installations. The MAX IV, costing some SEK 3 billion, was inaugurated on 21 June 2016. Both facilities have strong implications on material research. Sweden was ranked third in the
Global Innovation Index
The Global Innovation Index is an annual ranking of countries by their capacity for, and success in, innovation, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization. It was started in 2007 by INSEAD and ''World Business'', a British maga ...
in 2022.
Taxes
On average, 27% of taxpayers' money in Sweden goes to education and healthcare, whereas 5% goes to the police and military, and 42% to social security.
The typical worker receives 40% of his or her labour costs after the
tax wedge
The tax wedge is the deviation from the equilibrium price and quantity (P^* and Q^*, respectively) as a result of the taxation of a good. Because of the tax, consumers pay more for the good (P_c) than they did before the tax, and suppliers receive ...
. Total tax collected by Sweden as a percentage of its GDP peaked at 52.3% in 1990.
The country faced a real estate and banking crisis in 1990–1991, and consequently passed tax reforms in 1991 to implement tax rate cuts and tax base broadening over time.
Since 1990, taxes as a percentage of GDP collected by Sweden have been dropping, with total tax rates for the highest income earners dropping the most.
In 2010, 45.8% of the country's GDP was collected as taxes, the second highest among OECD countries, and nearly double the percentage in the US or South Korea.
[
]
Pensions
Every Swedish resident receives a state pension. Swedish Pensions Agency is responsible for pensions. People who have worked in Sweden, but relocated to another country, can also receive the Swedish pension. There are several types of pensions in Sweden: occupational and private pensions, and national retirement. A person can receive a combination of the various types of pensions.
Demographics
The total resident population of Sweden was 10,377,781 in October 2020. The population exceeded 10 million for the first time on Friday 20 January 2017.
The average population density is just over 25 people per km2 (65 per square mile), with 1 437 persons per km2 in localities (continuous settlement with at least 200 inhabitants).[Densification in half of Sweden's urban areas](_blank)
/ref>,[Roughly 87 percent of the population lives in localities and urban areas](_blank)
/ref> 87% of the population live in urban areas, which cover 1.5% of the entire land area.[Statistiska tätorter 2018](_blank)
page 33 63% of Swedes are in large urban areas. It is substantially higher in the south than in the north. The capital city Stockholm has a municipal population of about 950,000 (with 1.5 million in the urban area and 2.3 million in the metropolitan area). The second- and third-largest cities are Gothenburg
Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...
and Malmö
Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal populat ...
. Greater Gothenburg counts just over a million inhabitants and the same goes for the western part of Scania, along the Öresund. The Öresund Region, the Danish-Swedish cross-border region around the Öresund that Malmö is part of, has a population of 4 million. Outside of major cities, areas with notably higher population density include the agricultural part of Östergötland, the western coast, the area around Lake Mälaren and the agricultural area around Uppsala.
Norrland
Norrland (, "Northland", originally ''Norrlanden'' or "the Northlands") is the northernmost, largest and least populated of the three traditional lands of Sweden, consisting of nine provinces. Although Norrland does not serve any administ ...
, which covers approximately 60% of the Swedish territory, has a very low population density (below 5 people per square kilometre). The mountains and most of the remote coastal areas are almost unpopulated. Low population density exists also in large parts of western Svealand, as well as southern and central Småland. An area known as ''Finnveden'', which is located in the south-west of Småland, and mainly below the 57th parallel, can also be considered as almost empty of people.
Between 1820 and 1930, approximately 1.3 million Swedes, a third of the country's population at the time, emigrated to North America, and most of them to the United States. There are more than 4.4 million Swedish Americans
Swedish Americans ( sv, svenskamerikaner) are Americans of Swedes, Swedish ancestry. They include the 1.2 million Swedish immigrants during 1865–1915, who formed tight-knit communities, as well as their descendants and more recent immigrants.
...
according to a 2006 US Census Bureau estimate. In Canada, the community of Swedish ancestry
Swedes ( sv, svenskar) are a North Germanic ethnic group native to the Nordic region, primarily their nation state of Sweden, who share a common ancestry, culture, history and language. They mostly inhabit Sweden and the other Nordic countries ...
is 330,000 strong.
There are no official statistics on ethnicity, but according to Statistics Sweden, 2,752,572 (26%) inhabitants of Sweden were of a foreign background in 2021, defined as being born abroad or born in Sweden with both foreign-born parents. Of these inhabitants, 2,090,503 persons were born abroad and 662,069 persons were born in Sweden to parents born abroad. In addition, 805,340 persons had one parent born abroad with the other parent born in Sweden.
Sweden has one of the oldest populations in the world, with the average age of 41.1 years.
Language
The official language of Sweden is Swedish, a North Germanic language, related and very similar to Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
and Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
, but differing in pronunciation and orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
. Norwegians have little difficulty understanding Swedish, and Danes can also understand it, with slightly more difficulty than Norwegians. The same goes for standard Swedish speakers, who find it far easier to understand Norwegian than Danish. The dialects spoken in Scania, the southernmost part of the country, are influenced by Danish because the region traditionally was a part of Denmark and is nowadays situated closely to it. Sweden Finns
Sweden Finns ( fi, ruotsinsuomalaiset; sv, sverigefinnar) are a Finnish-speaking national minority in Sweden.
People with Finnish heritage comprise a relatively large share of the population of Sweden. In addition to a smaller part of Sweden F ...
are Sweden's largest linguistic minority, comprising about 5% of Sweden's population, and Finnish is recognised as a minority language. Owing to a 21st-century influx of native speakers of Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, the use of Arabic is likely more widespread in the country than that of Finnish. However, no official statistics are kept on language use.
Along with Finnish, four other minority languages are also recognised: Meänkieli
(literally 'our language') is a group of distinct Finnish language, Finnish dialects or a Finnic languages, Finnic language spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden along the valley of the Torne River. Its status as an independent language is d ...
, Sami
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
, Romani
Romani may refer to:
Ethnicities
* Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia
** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule
* Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
, and Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
. Swedish became Sweden's official language on 1 July 2009, when a new language law was implemented. The issue of whether Swedish should be declared the official language had been raised in the past, and the Riksdag voted on the matter in 2005, but the proposal narrowly failed.
In varying degrees, a majority of Swedes, especially those born after World War II, understand and speak English, owing to trade links, the popularity of overseas travel, a strong Anglo-American influence and the tradition of subtitling
Subtitles and captions are lines of dialogue or other text displayed at the bottom of the screen in films, television programs, video games or other visual media. They can be transcriptions of the screenplay, translations of it, or informati ...
rather than dubbing foreign television shows and films, and the relative similarity of the two languages which makes learning English easier. In a 2005 survey by Eurobarometer
Eurobarometer is a series of public opinion surveys conducted regularly on behalf of the European Commission and other EU Institutions since 1973. These surveys address a wide variety of topical issues relating to the European Union throughout i ...
, 89% of Swedes reported the ability to speak English.
English became a compulsory subject for secondary school students studying natural science
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
s as early as 1849, and has been a compulsory subject for all Swedish students since the late 1940s. Depending on the local school authorities, English is currently a compulsory subject between first grade
First grade (also called Grade One, called ''Year 2'' in England or Primary 2 in Scotland) is the first grade in elementary school and the first school year after kindergarten. Children are usually 6–7 years old in this grade.
Examples by r ...
and ninth grade
Ninth grade, freshman year, or grade 9 is the ninth year of school education in some school systems. Ninth grade is often the first school year of secondary school, high school in the United States, or the last year of middle school#United States ...
, with all students continuing in secondary school studying English for at least another year. Most students also study one and sometimes two additional languages. Some Danish and Norwegian is also taught as part of Swedish courses for native speakers. Because of the extensive mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
between the three continental Scandinavian language
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is als ...
s, Swedish speakers often use their native language when visiting or living in Norway or Denmark.
Religion
Before the 11th century, Swedes adhered to Norse paganism
Old Norse religion, also known as Norse paganism, is the most common name for a branch of Germanic religion which developed during the Proto-Norse period, when the North Germanic peoples separated into a distinct branch of the Germanic peop ...
, worshiping Æsir
The Æsir (Old Norse: ) are the gods of the principal pantheon in Norse religion. They include Odin, Frigg, Höðr, Thor, and Baldr. The second Norse pantheon is the Vanir. In Norse mythology, the two pantheons wage war against each other, res ...
gods, with its centre at the temple at Uppsala, Temple in Uppsala. With Christianization of Scandinavia, Christianisation in the 11th century, the laws of the country changed, forbidding worship of other deities until the late 19th century. After the Protestant Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
in the 1530s, a change led by Martin Luther's Swedish associate Olaus Petri, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church was abolished and Lutheranism became widespread. Adoption of Lutheranism was completed by the Uppsala Synod
The Uppsala Synod in 1593 was the most important synod of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. Sweden had gone through its Protestant Reformation and broken with Roman Catholicism in the 1520s, but an official confession of faith had never been declared. ...
of 1593, and it became the official religion. During the era following the Reformation, usually known as the period of Lutheran orthodoxy, small groups of non-Lutherans, especially Calvinism, Calvinist Dutch people, Dutchmen, the Moravian Church and French Huguenots played a significant role in trade and industry, and were quietly tolerated as long as they kept a low religious profile. The Sami people, Sami originally had their own Sámi shamanism, shamanistic religion, but they were converted to Lutheranism by Swedish missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries.
With religious liberalisations in the late 18th century believers of other faiths, including History of the Jews in Sweden, Judaism and Roman Catholicism, were allowed to live and work freely in the country. However, until 1860 it remained illegal for Lutherans to convert to another religion. The 19th century saw the arrival of various Low church, evangelical free churches, and, towards the end of the century, secularism, leading many to distance themselves from church rituals. Leaving the Church of Sweden became legal with the so-called Dissenter Acts (Sweden), Dissenter Act of 1860, but only under the provision of entering another Christian denomination. The right to stand outside any religious denomination was formally established in the law on freedom of religion in 1951.
In 2000, the Church of Sweden
The Church of Sweden ( sv, Svenska kyrkan) is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.6 million members at year end 2021, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sw ...
was disestablished. Sweden was the second Nordic country to Separation of church and state, disestablish its state church (after Finland did so in the Church Act of 1869).
At the end of 2018, 57.7% of Swedes belonged to the Church of Sweden
The Church of Sweden ( sv, Svenska kyrkan) is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.6 million members at year end 2021, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sw ...
; this number had been decreasing by about 1.5 percentage points a year for the previous seven years and one percentage point a year on average for the previous two decades. Approximately 2% of the church's members regularly attend Sunday services. The reason for the large number of inactive members is partly that, until 1996, children automatically became members at birth if at least one of the parents was a member. Since 1996, only children and adults who are infant baptism, christened become members. Some 275,000 Swedes are today members of various Evangelical Protestant free churches (where congregation attendance is much higher), and due to recent immigration, there are now some 100,000 Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christians and 92,000 Roman Catholics living in Sweden.
The first Muslim congregation was established in 1949, when a small contingent of Tatars migrated from Finland. Islam's presence in Sweden remained marginal until the 1960s, when Sweden started to receive migrants from the Balkans and Turkey. Further immigration from North Africa and the Middle East have brought the estimated Islam in Sweden, Muslim population to 600,000. However, only about 110,000 were members of a congregation around 2010.
According to the Eurobarometer, Eurobarometer Poll 2010,
* 18% of Swedish citizens responded that "they believe there is a god".
* 45% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force".
* 34% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force".
According to a Demoskop study in 2015, the beliefs of the Swedish showed that
* 21% believed in a god (down from 35 percent in 2008).
* 16% believed in ghosts.
* 14% believed in creationism or intelligent design.
Sociology professor Phil Zuckerman claims that Swedes, despite a lack of belief in God, commonly question the term atheist, preferring to call themselves Christians while being content with remaining in the Church of Sweden. Religion continues to play a role in Swedish cultural identity. This is evidenced by the fact that the majority of Swedish adults continue to remain members of the Lutheran Church despite having to pay a church tax; moreover, rates of baptism remain high and Christian views on marriage, church weddings are increasing in Sweden.
Health
Healthcare in Sweden is mainly Publicly funded health care, tax-funded, universal for all citizens, and decentralised, although private health care also exists. The health care system in Sweden is financed primarily through taxes levied by regional councils and municipalities. A total of 21 councils are in charge of primary and hospital care within the country.
Private healthcare is a rarity in Sweden, and even those private institutions work under the mandated city councils. The city councils regulates the rules and the establishment of potential private practices. While care for the elderly or those who need psychiatric help is conducted privately in many other countries, in Sweden, publicly funded local authorities are in charge of this type of care.
Healthcare in Sweden is similar in quality to other developed nations. Sweden ranks in the top five countries with respect to low infant mortality. It also ranks high in life expectancy and in safe drinking water. In 2018, health and medical care represented around 11% of GDP.
Education
Children aged 1–5 years old are guaranteed a place in a public kindergarten ( sv, förskola or, colloquially, ). Between the ages of 6 and 16, children attend compulsory comprehensive school. In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Swedish 15-year-old pupils score close to the OECD average. After completing the ninth grade, about 90% of the students continue with a three-year upper secondary school (''gymnasium''), which can lead to both a job qualification or entrance eligibility to university. The school system is largely financed by taxes.
The Swedish government treats public and independent schools equally by introducing education vouchers in 1992 as one of the first countries in the world after the Netherlands. Anyone can establish a for-profit school and the municipality must pay new schools the same amount as municipal schools get. School lunch is free for all students in Sweden, and providing breakfast is also encouraged.
There are a number of different List of universities in Sweden, universities and colleges in Sweden, the oldest and largest of which are situated in Uppsala University, Uppsala, Lund University, Lund, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg and Stockholm University, Stockholm. In 2000, 32% of Swedish people held a tertiary education, tertiary degree, making the country fifth in the OECD in that category. Along with several other European countries, the government also subsidises tuition of international students pursuing a degree at Swedish institutions, although a recent bill passed in the Riksdag will limit this subsidy to students from EEA countries and Switzerland.
The large influx of immigrants to Swedish schools has been cited as a significant part of the reason why Sweden has dropped more than any other European country in the international PISA rankings.
Immigration
In recent centuries the country has been transformed from a nation of net emigration, ending after World War I, to a nation of net immigration, from World War II onwards. In recent years the country has received a massive influx of refugees and immigrants mainly due to the Syrian war which broke out in 2015. Sweden received more refugees per capita than anywhere else in Europe. In 2015 alone a record-breaking 163,000 people applied for asylum to a country of barely 10 million people.
The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants, settlement patterns, effects on upward social mobility, crime, and voting behaviour.
There are no exact numbers on the ethnic background of migrants and their descendants in Sweden because the Swedish government does not base any statistics on ethnicity. This is, however, not to be confused with the migrants' Nationality, national backgrounds, which are recorded.
Immigrants in Sweden are mostly concentrated in the urban areas of Svealand and Götaland. Since the early 1970s, immigration to Sweden has been mostly due to refugee migration and family reunification from countries in Asia (particularly Western Asia) and Latin America. In 2019, Sweden granted 21,958 people asylum, up from 21,502 in 2018.
In 2021 one in five people (2,090,503) in Sweden were born abroad. The ten largest groups of foreign-born persons in the Swedish civil registry in 2021 were from:
# (196,077)
# (146,769)
# (136,607)
# (95,076)
# (83,122)
# (70,087)
# (62,803)
# Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia (62,444)
# (60,194)
# (54,004)
According to an official investigation by Ministry of Finance (Sweden)#Financial Institutions and Markets Department, The Swedish Pensions Agency on order from the government, the immigration to Sweden will double the state's expenses for pensions to the population.
Culture
Sweden has many authors of worldwide recognition including August Strindberg, Astrid Lindgren, and Nobel Prize winners Selma Lagerlöf and Harry Martinson. In total seven Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to Swedes. The nation's most well-known artists are painters such as Carl Larsson and Anders Zorn, and the sculptors Tobias Sergel and Carl Milles.
Swedish 20th-century culture is noted by pioneering works in the early days of cinema, with Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjöström. In the 1920s–1980s, the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and actors Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman became internationally noted people within cinema. More recently, the films of Lukas Moodysson, Lasse Hallström, and Ruben Östlund have received international recognition.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Sweden was seen as an international leader in what is now referred to as the "sexual revolution", with gender equality having particularly been promoted. The early Swedish film ''I Am Curious (Yellow)'' (1967) reflected a liberal view of sexuality, including scenes of love making that caught international attention, and introduced the concept of the "Swedish sin" that had been introduced earlier in the US with Ingmar Bergman's ''Summer with Monika.''
The image of "hot love and cold people" emerged. Sexual liberalism was seen as part of modernisation process that by breaking down traditional borders would lead to the emancipation of natural forces and desires.
Sweden has also become very liberal towards homosexuality, as is reflected in the popular acceptance of films such as ''Fucking Åmål, Show Me Love'', which is about two young lesbians in the small Swedish town of Åmål. Since 1 May 2009, Sweden repealed its "registered partnership" laws and fully replaced them with gender-neutral marriage, Sweden also offers domestic partnerships for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Cohabitation () by couples of all ages, including teenagers as well as elderly couples, is widespread. As of 2009, Sweden is experiencing a baby boom.
Music
Historical re-creations of Norse music have been attempted based on instruments found in Viking sites. The instruments used were the ''lur'' (a sort of trumpet), simple string instruments, wooden flutes and drums. Sweden has a significant Music of Sweden, folk-music scene. The ''joik'', a type of Sami music, is a chant that is part of the traditional Sami animistic spirituality. Notable composers include Carl Michael Bellman and Franz Berwald.
Sweden also has a prominent choral music tradition. Out of a population of 9.5 million, it is estimated that five to six hundred thousand people sing in choirs.
In 2007, with over 800 million dollars in revenue, Sweden was the third-largest music exporter in the world and surpassed only by the US and the UK.[Interesting facts about EU countries]
casgroup.fiu.edu According to one source 2013, Sweden produces the most chart hits per capita in the world, followed by the UK and the USA.
Sweden has a rather lively jazz scene. During the last sixty years or so it has attained a remarkably high artistic standard, stimulated by domestic as well as external influences and experiences. The Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research has published an overview of jazz in Sweden by Lars Westin.
Architecture
Before the 13th century almost all buildings were made of timber, but a shift began towards stone. Early Swedish stone buildings are the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque churches on the countryside. As so happens, many of them were built in Scania and are in effect Danish churches. This would include the Lund Cathedral from the 11th century and the somewhat younger church in Dalby, Lund, Dalby, but also many early Gothic (architecture), Gothic churches built through influences of the Hanseatic League, such as in Ystad, Malmö and Helsingborg.
Cathedrals in other parts of Sweden were also built as seats of Sweden's bishops. The Skara Cathedral is of bricks from the 14th century, and the Uppsala Cathedral in the 15th. In 1230 the foundations of the Linköping Cathedral were made, the material was there limestone, but the building took some 250 years to finish.
Among older structures are also some significant fortresses and other historical buildings such as at Borgholm Castle, Halltorps Manor and Eketorp fortress on the island Öland, the Nyköping fortress and the Visby city wall.
Around 1520 Sweden was out of the Middle Ages and united under King Gustav Vasa, who immediately initiated grand mansions, castles and fortresses to be built. Some of the more magnificent include Kalmar Castle, Gripsholm Castle and the one at Vadstena.
In the next two centuries, Sweden was designated by Baroque architecture and later the rococo. Notable projects from that time include the city Karlskrona, which has now also been declared a World Heritage Site and the Drottningholm Palace.
1930 was the year of the great Stockholm exhibition, which marked the breakthrough of Functionalism (architecture), Functionalism, or as it became known. The style came to dominate in the following decades. Some notable projects of this kind were the Million Programme, offering affordable living in large apartment complexes.
The Ericsson Globe, located in Stockholm, is the largest hemispherical building on Earth. Its dome has a diameter of 110 metres (360 feet) and took two and a half years to build.
Media
Swedes are among the greatest consumers of newspapers in the world, and nearly every town is served by a local paper. The country's main quality morning papers are ''Dagens Nyheter'' (liberal), ''Göteborgs-Posten'' (liberal), ''Svenska Dagbladet'' (liberal conservative) and ''Sydsvenska Dagbladet'' (liberal). The two largest evening tabloid (newspaper format), tabloids are ''Aftonbladet'' (social democratic) and ''Expressen'' (liberal). The ad-financed, free international morning paper, ''Metro International'', was founded in Stockholm, Sweden. The country's news is reported in English by, among others, ''The Local'' (liberal).
The public broadcasting companies held a monopoly on radio and television for a long time in Sweden. Licence-funded radio broadcasts started in 1925. A second radio network was started in 1954, and a third opened 1962, in response to pirate radio stations. Non-profit Community radio#Sweden, community radio was allowed in 1979 and in 1993 commercial local radio started.
The licence-funded television service was officially launched in 1956. A second channel, SVT2, TV2, was launched in 1969. These two channels (operated by Sveriges Television since the late 1970s) held a monopoly until the 1980s when cable and satellite television became available. The first Swedish-language satellite service was TV3 (Sweden), TV3 which started broadcasting from London in 1987. It was followed by Kanal 5 (Sweden), Kanal 5 in 1989 (then known as Nordic Channel) and TV4 (Sweden), TV4 in 1990.
In 1991 the government announced it would begin taking applications from private television companies wishing to broadcast on the terrestrial television, terrestrial network. TV4, which had previously been broadcasting via satellite, was granted a permit and began its terrestrial broadcasts in 1992, becoming the first private channel to broadcast television content from within the country.
Around half the population are connected to cable television. Digital terrestrial television in Sweden started in 1999 and the last analogue terrestrial broadcasts were terminated in 2007.
Literature
The first literary text from Sweden is the Rök runestone, carved during the Viking Age c. 800 AD. With the conversion of the land to Christianity around 1100 AD, Sweden entered the Middle Ages, during which monastic writers preferred to use Latin. Therefore, there are only a few texts in the Old Swedish from that period. Swedish literature only began to flourish when the language was standardised during the 16th century. This standardisation was largely due to the full translation of the Bible into Swedish in 1541. This translation is the so-called Gustav Vasa Bible.
With improved education and the freedom brought by secularisation, the 17th century saw several notable authors develop the Swedish language further. Some key figures include Georg Stiernhielm (17th century), who was the first to write classical poetry in Swedish; Johan Henric Kellgren (18th century), the first to write fluent Swedish prose; Carl Michael Bellman (late 18th century), the first writer of burlesque ballads; and August Strindberg (late 19th century), a socio-realistic writer and playwright who won worldwide fame. The early 20th century continued to produce notable authors, such as Selma Lagerlöf, (Nobel laureate 1909), Verner von Heidenstam (Nobel laureate 1916) and Pär Lagerkvist (Nobel laureate 1951).
In recent decades, a handful of Swedish writers have established themselves internationally, including the detective novelist Henning Mankell and the writer of spy fiction Jan Guillou. The Swedish writer to have made the most lasting impression on world literature is the children's book writer Astrid Lindgren, and her books about Pippi Longstocking, Emil i Lönneberga, Emil, and others. In 2008, the second best-selling fiction author in the world was Stieg Larsson, whose ''Millennium'' series of crime novels is being published posthumously to critical acclaim. Larsson drew heavily on the work of Lindgren by basing his central character, Lisbeth Salander, on Longstocking.
Holidays
Apart from traditional Protestant Liturgical year, Christian holidays, Sweden also celebrates some unique holidays, some of a pre-Christian tradition. They include Midsummer celebrating the summer solstice; Walpurgis Night () on 30 April lighting bonfires; and Labour Day or May Day on 1 May is dedicated to socialist demonstrations. The day of giver-of-light Saint Lucy, Saint Lucia, 13 December, is widely acknowledged in elaborate celebrations which betoken its Italian origin and commence the month-long Christmas season.
6 June is the National holiday of Sweden, National Day of Sweden and has since 2005 been a public holiday. Furthermore, there are Flag flying days in Sweden, official flag flying day observances and a Namesdays in Sweden calendar. In August many Swedes have (crayfish dinner parties). Martin of Tours Eve is celebrated in Scania
Scania, also known by its native name of Skåne (, ), is the southernmost of the historical provinces of Sweden, provinces (''landskap'') of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conte ...
in November with parties, where roast goose and ''svartsoppa'' ('black soup', made of goose stock, fruit, spices, spirits and goose blood) are served. The Sami people, Sami, one of Sweden's indigenous minorities, have their holiday on 6 February and Scania celebrate their Scanian Flag day on the third Sunday in July.
Cuisine
Swedish cuisine, like that of the other Nordic countries
The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; literal translation, lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmar ...
(Cuisine of Denmark, Denmark, Cuisine of Norway, Norway and Cuisine of Finland, Finland), was traditionally simple. Fish (particularly herring), meat, potatoes and dairy products played prominent roles. Spices were sparse. Preparations include Swedish meatballs, traditionally served with gravy, boiled potatoes and lingonberry jam; Swedish pancakes, pancakes; ''pyttipanna'', a spiced fried hash of meat and potatoes originally meant to use up any leftovers of meat; ''lutefisk, lutfisk''; and the ''smörgåsbord'', or lavish buffet. ''Akvavit'' is a popular alcoholic distilled beverage, and the drinking of ''snaps'' is of cultural importance. The traditional flat and dry crisp bread has developed into several contemporary variants. Regionally important foods are the ''surströmming'' (a fermented fish) in northern Sweden and eel in southern Sweden.
Swedish traditional dishes, some of which are many hundreds of years old, are still an important part of Swedish everyday meals, in spite of the fact that modern-day Swedish cuisine adopts many international dishes.
In August, at the traditional feast known as crayfish party, ''kräftskiva'', Swedes eat large amounts of crayfish boiled with dill.
Cinema
Swedes have been fairly prominent in the film area through the years. A number of Swedish people have found success in Hollywood, including Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo and Max von Sydow. Amongst several directors who have made internationally successful films can be mentioned Ingmar Bergman, Lukas Moodysson and Lasse Hallström.
Fashion
Interest in fashion is big in Sweden and the country headquarters famous brands like H&M, Hennes & Mauritz (operating as H&M), J. Lindeberg (operating as JL), Acne Jeans, Acne, Lindex, Odd Molly, Cheap Monday, Gant U.S.A., Gant, WESC, Filippa K, and Nakkna within its borders. These companies, however, are composed largely of buyers who import fashionable goods from throughout Europe and America, continuing the trend of Swedish business toward multinational economic dependency like many of its neighbours.
Sports
Sport activities are a national movement with half of the population actively participating in organised sporting activities. The two main spectator sports are Association football, football and ice hockey. Second to football, horse sports (of which most of the participants are women) have the highest number of practitioners. Thereafter, golf, orienteering, gymnastics, track and field, and the team sports of ice hockey, handball, floorball, basketball and bandy are the most popular in terms of practitioners.
The Swedish national men's ice hockey team, affectionately known as (English: Three Crowns; the national symbol of Sweden), is regarded as one of the best in the world. The team has won the Ice Hockey World Championships, World Championships nine times, placing them third in the all-time medal count. also won Olympic gold medals in Ice hockey at the 1994 Winter Olympics, 1994 and Ice hockey at the 2006 Winter Olympics, 2006. In 2006, became the first national hockey team to win both the Olympic and world championships in the same year. The Sweden national football team, Swedish national men's football team has seen some success at the World Cup in the past, finishing second when they hosted the tournament in 1958, and third twice, in 1950 FIFA World Cup, 1950 and 1994 FIFA World Cup, 1994.
Sweden hosted the 1912 Summer Olympics, Equestrian at the 1956 Summer Olympics and the FIFA World Cup in 1958 FIFA World Cup, 1958. Other big sports events include the UEFA Euro 1992, 1995 FIFA Women's World Cup, 1995 World Championships in Athletics, UEFA Women's Euro 2013, and several championships of ice hockey, curling, athletics, skiing, Bandy World Championship, bandy, figure skating and swimming.
In 2016, the Swedish Poker Federation (Svepof) joined The International Federation of Poker (IFP).
See also
*List of Sweden-related topics
* Outline of Sweden
* 329 Svea
Notes
References
Further reading
* Bagge, Sverre (2005). "The Scandinavian Kingdoms". In ''The New Cambridge Medieval History''. Eds. Rosamond McKitterick et al. Cambridge University Press, 2005. .
*
Sweden
''The World Factbook''. Central Intelligence Agency.
*
* Durant, Colin (2003). ''Choral Conducting: philosophy and practice'', Routledge, pp. 46–47. .
* Einhorn, Eric and John Logue (1989). ''Modern Welfare States: Politics and Policies in Social Democratic Scandinavia''. Praeger Publishers, 1989. .
*
* Koblik, Steven (1975). ''Sweden's Development from Poverty to Affluence 1750–1970''. University of Minnesota Press. .
*
* Magocsi, Paul Robert (1998). ''Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples''. University of Minnesota Press, 1998. .
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sweden
Agenda 21 – Natural Resource Aspects – Sweden. 5th Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, April 1997.
* Nordstrom, Byron J. (2000). ''Scandinavia since 1500''. University of Minnesota Press, 2000. .
*
*
* Ståhl, Solveig. (1999)
"English spoken – fast ibland hellre än bra"
''LUM, Lunds universitet med''delar, 7:1999, 3 September 1999. In Swedish.
*
*
*
*
Sweden: Social and economic conditions
(2007). In ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
*
* Uddhammar, Emil (1993). ''Partierna och den stora staten: en analys av statsteorier och svensk politik under 1900-talet''. Stockholm, City University Press.
* United States Department of State
Sweden
* Zuckerman, Phil (2007), Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns PDF i Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
External links
Sweden
''The World Factbook''. Central Intelligence Agency.
Sweden
entry at ''Britannica.com''
*
*
*
Sweden
from ''UCB Libraries GovPubs''
*
Sweden profile
from the BBC News
*
*
Key Development Forecasts for Sweden
from International Futures
Study in Sweden
– official guide to studying in Sweden
Wayback Machine
Technological Waves and Economic Growth in Sweden 1850–2005
Sweden – Economic Growth and Structural Change, 1800–2000
— EH.Net Encyclopedia
vifanord
– a digital library that provides scientific information on the Nordic and Baltic countries as well as the Baltic region as a whole
Public sector
Sweden.se
— Sweden's official portal
The Swedish Parliament
– official website
The Government of Sweden
– official website
– official website of the Swedish Monarchy
News media
Radio Sweden
– public service
Sveriges Television
– public service
Dagens Nyheter
Svenska Dagbladet
The Local – Sweden's news in English
– independent English language news site
Trade
World Bank Summary Trade Statistics Sweden
Travel
VisitSweden.com
– official travel and tourism website for Sweden
{{Authority control
Sweden,
Germanic countries and territories
Northwestern European countries
Members of the Nordic Council
Member states of the European Union
Member states of the Union for the Mediterranean
Member states of the United Nations
Kingdom of Sweden
Scandinavian countries
Countries in Europe
States and territories established in the 12th century
Christian states
Swedish-speaking countries and territories
OECD members