This information is intended for people who do not know much about Sweden. Since moving to the UK I have been surprised at how many people mix up Sweden and Switzerland… (Luckily Switzerland is a terrific country, so things could be a lot worse!) Sweden is at the top, in the centre! Another thing that surprises me is when people ask me whether I am a Catholic or a Protestant.

Well, if they know I am from Sweden, then they should already know the answer!

Actively practicing or not, practically everybody in Scandinavia is a Protestant! (Just like practically everyone in Spain or Italy is a Catholic.)

HEAD OF STATE: The Head of State is King Carl XVI Gustaf who is married to Queen Silvia and has three children; Crown Princess Victoria, Carl Philip and Madeleine.

GEOGRAPHY AND SIZE: Sweden is the third largest country in Europe, located at the very North of the continent. The upper 1/5 is above the Arctic Circle. Sweden borders Norway to the West, Finland to the East and Denmark to the South.

Previously, the Soviet Union was on the other side of the Baltic Sea; uncomfortably close… Now that the Soviet Union is gone, we find that these neigbours are in fact our good friends, the Balts (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) as well as Poland and the Russian city-state of Kaliningrad. (Up until the second world war, Sweden had excellent relations with the Baltic area, however during the Cold War, Soviet policy towards the West put a stop to this. Our friends from the other side of the Baltic Sea became suspect strangers. Occasionally during the Cold War, some Balts would defect to Sweden on a raft or similar, causing plenty of drama!)

The Swedish Royal Family
POPULATION: 9 million. The language is Swedish, spoken by everybody. Sami (the language of the Lapps, a minority group in the North) is also an official language, along with Finnish, I believe. Sweden has accepted a lot of labour immigration (in the 1970s and 1960s) and refugees (1980s to present.)

As a result approximately 10% of the population are first or second generation immigrants from among others Turkey, Chile, Somalia and Iran. This figure is much higher in the largest cities; Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmoe.

FLAG: Yellow and Blue, symbolising a golden cross against a blue sky!

Politics

Sweden has been governed mainly by the Swedish Social Democratic Party for over 70 years. This has resulted in an economy that is fundamentally capitalist but has been very strongly influenced by socialism. Rental flats and child-care are examples of goods and services which are heavily subsidized and/or price-controlled.

The entire Swedish population today has grown up under the shadow (protection?) of socialism, taking welfare and constant harsh criticism of capitalism for granted. Typical Swedish house + flagSome socialist practices still going on today are so ingrained in society that no political party even dares to question them. Too many people’s lives would be seriously affected.

The fall of communism in Europe brought about some minor change on the political scene in Sweden, as it was proven that communism and socialism were not sustainable political models. The Swedish Communist and Socialist political parties amended their manifestos and the Communist party even changed it’s name to ‘The Leftist Party’ and distanced itself from the policies of the former Soviet Union.

But despite the fall of Communism, the majority of Swedes continued to vote for either of these two left wing parties with one exception up until the general election 2006 when the ‘Middle Way’ parties were elected into power. Swedish 1 May Parade, 2005 In terms of people’s worldview and personal opinions, Sweden may in fact be the most socialist country in Europe today, depending on how you define it. I think this is slowly beginning to change though. What do you think?

During both world wars as well as the Cold War, Sweden was ‘neutral’ and did not get involved. It was one of very few countries that escaped unharmed from both world wars. In fact, the Swedish mainland has never been invaded by foreign powers, with the exception of Denmark taking an interest in the Southern-most tip of the country several hundred years ago.

The Vikings

Swedish Vikings 400-1100 AD explored mainly to the East (Russia, Poland and the Near East) and as a result have less of a violent reputation than the Danish and Norwegian Vikings who sailed West, regularly attacking settlements on the British Isles or in North West Europe.

The Swedish Vikings however, usually crossed the Baltic Sea and sailed down along the rivers of Russia and the European mainland. They were regular visitors to Istanbul in Turkey (called Constantinople at the time) and they also ventured deep deep into Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine where they were able to access trading routes into Asia. Vikings hence traded with merchants from the Far East and are said to have got along well with Cossacks, Turks and many others who lived in the areas they visited.
.Swedish Vikings: Violent Bullies or Misrepresented?
Archeological findings of a Buddha statue dating from 400 AD, as well as other products originating from the Far East show how far the Vikings’ contacts reached. In many cases, Vikings had rune-stones made to commemorate their trips abroad; these have been a great testimony of how the Vikings travelled and what they did on those trips.

(Occasionally they did actually live up to their violent reputation though, plundering and capturing locals as slaves whom they brought back home to use as labour. This was not the norm though! )

The Viking era ended in Scandinavia when the area became Christian around 1100 AD. (The Viking lifestyle wasn’t compatible with Christianity!) The religion of the Vikings; ‘Asatru’ , i.e. the worship of the Norse Gods such as Oden (Odin), Tor and Freja (Freia) was gradually replaced with Christianity over a period of a couple of hundred years, AD 1050 and onwards. Some traditions of the Vikings are still practiced in Scandinavia though, thinly disguised as local-flavour Christianity.

Middle Ages and Protestant Reformation

During the Middle Ages Sweden was in a Union with the other Scandinavian countries; Norway and Denmark. Finland was also part of the union, but not as an independent country; it belonged to Sweden at the time. Just like in the rest of Europe, the nation-state as we know it today did not yet exist. Local princes were at war with each other on and off across the area and the inhabitants of the ‘country’ were mainly only united by the fact that they spoke the same langauge.

In the early 1500s Sweden became unified as a country under King Gustav Eriksson Vasa. At the same time the country also became Protestant. The reformation in Sweden was a quick and efficient process, at least compared with how it worked out elsewhere. Sadly plenty of damage to historical buildings was done by over-zealous reformers who painted over beautiful church-wall decorations with white chalk and destroyed art that they felt was too inspired by Catholic beliefs.
Gustav Vasa, country founder
During centuries following the protestant reformation of the country, Sweden became a local empire, controlling Norway, Finland, part of the Baltic States and even parts of Germany. It participated in a number of wars on the European continent and in Russia.

The Swedish empire fell apart during the 18th century at which point Sweden began forming close ties first with France, then later Germany which is more similar to Sweden in its language and culture. The close ties with Germany lasted until the Second World War. My grandmother learnt German as her first foreign language in school, just like I learnt English as my first foreign language.

The War and It’s Aftermath

In the era after the war, the Social Democratic Party has been in power for all but a few years. This has influenced the entire structure of the country, from the appointment of judges and educational leaders to the appointment of bishops in the (national) Lutheran Church (which is effectively a state organ).

In addition, the media is also strongly tainted to the left and Social Democracy now permeates the country down to its very core. Over the last 70 years Social Democracy has managed to perpetuate itself in all parts of Swedish society and even form an alliance with both the national unions and the major businesses and financial institutions of the country. As a result, Sweden now has a rather unique mish-mash of socialist and capitalist institutions co-existing in harmony.

Ex-prime minster Olof Palme (1927 – 1986) personifies this state of affairs quite well in that he was a socialist albeit from an upper-class background. Famously he got along very well with the industry leaders of the country while still being a strongly committed socialist. He regularly voiced criticism towards the United States, particularly it’s foreign policy.

The only available (two, state owned) TV channels during Palme’s years in power were strongly tainted from a socialist perspective which influenced the generations growing up watching it. (I count myself to that generation.) Even children’s programmes regularly had a socialist edge to them!

There was very little diversion or opposition to the Social Democratic view of the world which was more or less consistently published in Swedish media for many decades. A kind of self-sensorship was going on whereby a lot of important policy-decisions were never challenged despite being far from unambigous.
Socialist, Aristocrat, Prime Minister
Really, you could say that Social Democracy and Political Correctness became the new religion in Sweden as the Church of Sweden lost it’s position as a force to be reckoned with in society.. It is generally agreed that the main national School of Journalism in Stockholm was (is?) 100% ‘red’. This school has been turning out well-trained but also socialist-biased professionals year after year since the 1940s. As you can imagine, this has had a very significate impact on the political climate in media!

Olof Palme was active in Swedish politics for over thirty years and had a huge impact on the country, following in the tradition of previous long-term socialist prime ministers Per Albin Hansson and Tage Erlander. Palme was murdered while walking home (without bodyguards) from a Stockholm cinema with his wife in 1986. The murder is still unsolved.

Joining the EU

Sweden was ‘neutral’ during the Cold War, not associated with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. For this and other reasons, Sweden stood outside of the European Union until after the Cold War had ended and there had been a national referendum about whether to join the union or remain loosely associated with it through the EES.

It took a lot of convincing on the part of those in favour of joining (i.e the political and financial elite) in order to get the population to vote ‘Yes’!

The referendum, taking place in 1994, was a very close call indeed, as most Swedes had initially been against Sweden joining the EU. (Not surprinsing really, after decades of negative reporting about the EU in the media!)

Hence the campaign proceeding the referendum was a rather odd affair as it actually turned out that the population at large, at this point, was more socialist than the Social Democratic Party itself! (The Party had become aware of the financial reality of the situation and turned away from its previous position on EU membership. The people however were not so quick to catch on..)

The types of reservations that people had against joining the EU were mainly along the lines of “The EU will destroy the welfare state”; “The EU is an elitist organisation that is really mainly out for financial gain at the expense of the third world / working class et.c…. ” Anti-EU Cartoons; Witty but mainly nonsense!There was also some anti-German sentiments, added to the average Swedish person’s suspicion against the general competency and efficiency of any country in the Southern part of Europe…

The campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote was sponsored by business organisations and all political parties with the exception of the Leftist party. I think it would be fair to say that the ‘Vote Yes’ campaign was much better sponsored than the ‘Vote No’ campaign… Private enterprises realised that they would be in a really difficult situation should there was a ‘No’ vote. Hence they litterally threw money at the ‘Yes’ campaign!

They got away with it as the Social Democrat party leadership themselves supported the Yes vote.

(How awkward for them that the actual party members had been so brainwashed to dislike the EU that they didn’t (initially) follow the party line and support membership!)

However, in all honesty, it has to be said that from a financial perspective the playing field wasn’t exactly equal on this vote. With excellent resources at their hands, the ‘Yes’ campaign managed to significantly swing public opionion within a period of about a year. The ‘Yes’ campaign won the referendum with 50.5% of votes, or something like that.
I was a student at the time and actually did some campaign work for the ‘Yes’ side. It was a lot of fun!

Sweden joined the European Union in 1995. In another referendum in 2004, Sweden voted not to adopt the Euro as national currency for the time being. I think it is obvious to everybody that this is a temporary state of affairs. Whereas a financially and politically influential country like the UK can possibly afford to decline the Euro, Sweden cannot.

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