Sweden

Sweden is (for Europe) both a large and cold country, located in Scandinavia, which becomes livable via slow-onset fast-exit summers that actually regularly achieve Mediterranean temperatures.[note 1]

“”You'd think the cold would keep all the idiots out.

—Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino

Sweden is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. As of 2020, her prime minister is Stefan Löfvén. This welfare state is usually considered a stronghold of social democracy and the Nordic model. Sweden consistently ranks in the top 10 in the UN Human Development Index,[1] Among equally competitive placements in a variety of other rating systems as well. Sweden, being a chummy country, borders other chummy countries as well. Norway (to the west and the north), Finland (to the east), and Denmark (to the south, across the Öresund bridge).

Sweden is also a relative fortress of atheism, humanism and secularism.[2] It is not like, say, Mississippi.[3] Or even Iran.

Being a Swede on the internet has to be a pretty wild ride, what with both the left and right using your country as the go-to example of being either a flawless utopia (it's not) or a failed state brimming with rapefugees (it's not). They must be talking about Sweden, New York.

So, how's their pinko socialist welfare capitalism treating them?

To quote directly from Wikipedia's article on Sweden;

Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides universal health care and tertiary education for its citizens. It has the world's eighth-highest per capita income and ranks highly in numerous metrics of national performance, including quality of life, health, education, protection of civil liberties, economic competitiveness, equality, prosperity and human development.[4][5][6][7][8]

Something, something, they're not doing too bad. Something, something; time will tell how Biff Tannen's Donald Trump's Pleasure Paradise is going to toss and turn America in those same rating systems cited above... Eep.

Exports

They make made Saabs and Volvos and sell sold them to safety-conscious Americans.[note 2]

IKEA, the furniture chain/restaurant, is based in Sweden.

The town of Husqvarna (now spelled Huskvarna) produced the following, among other things (all built by separate companies named after the town):

• Chainsaws, lawnmowers and gardening equipment
• Motorcycles
• Firearms
• Sewing machines

Swedish cinema

Ingmar Bergman made some fine movies. So did Ingrid Bergman. You won't find much sex in any of their movies. At least not much pleasurable sex. For instance, in Cries and Whispers, a woman took the drastic step of masturbating with a glass shard so that her husband would lose interest in her. (!!!!!)

In 1967, as an answer to Bergman's highly symbolic and stylized films, director Vilgot Sjöman made a film titled Jag är nyfiken (English title, I am Curious). The 3½ hour film was in the style of French New Wave films from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Sjöman later recut the film into two films -- I am Curious (Yellow) and I am Curious (Blue). In Yellow, the lead actress is shown kissing her boyfriend's penis, which led to censorship in many places around the world, including in Massachusetts. It also led to a dramatic uptick in the number of porno films produced in Sweden. As John Candy would later say in the 1984 movie Splash, some of the world's finest nudie films had come from Sweden.

Miscellaneous

Snus -- those stamp-sized pouches filled with dried snuff that help nicotine addicts get through long stretches in no-smoking areas -- originated in Sweden in the early 19th century. (Pronounced snoos, not snooze or snuss.)

Other exports include:

• Volvo
• Pop groups
• Saab Dongfeng National Electric Vehicle Sweden[note 3]
• Ericsson
• Swedish meatballs
• Knäckebröd
• JAS-39 Gripen
• Absolut Vodka
• Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time
• Nazi YouTubers
• Heavy Metal and tons of other metal genres[note 4]
• Minecraft
• And yeah, the meatballs are not as good as you might've heard before, you know the foods suck when a food that represents the whole country is meatball.

Sweden claimed to be neutral during World War II, while selling iron ore to the Nazi weapons industry and letting Nazi soldiers travel through Sweden on their way to attack Norway.

Stockholm syndrome

See the main article on this topic: Stockholm syndrome

Helsinki Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which the victim of prolonged abuse/crime displays support for or sympathy with the perpetrator(s). The original term was coined in an analysis of behavior exhibited by hostages (kept for five days during a [failed] bank robbery in Stockholm in 1973) and referred to the square where the bank was located; since most of the rest of the world has never heard of Norrmalmstorg, it was formalized and popularized as 'Stockholm' syndrome.

A literal tourist trap

Arguably the most common variant of Stockholm syndrome results from people (generally Americans) visiting Stockholm as tourists, and clearly they must have had a God-awful terrible time there to such a degree that the actual syndrome triggers, because slowly they seem to forget that America is #1, and suddenly they want to stay, and they start to tell people they loved it there, and they later demand to show friends and family tons of their photos from Stockholm where they look suspiciously happy with their vacation... Years later, these poor, deluded people will still dementedly recount their visit to Sweden as having been a "happy and eventful" vacation; a clear indication that some type of brainwashing related to the syndrome must have settled in for good. For shame.

Geography

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and largest city of Sweden. A 750-year-old city, famous for the handing out of the Nobel Prize, it is well known in science and the arts.

Göteborg

Göteborg, Gothenburg or Goteborg, is the second largest city in Sweden and a notable producer of angst driven pop music, spinny things, herring and bad puns. It's located on the west coast in Sweden, it's also the front side of Sweden. North Europe's biggest amusement park Liseberg and biggest shopping mall Femman lies in Göteborg.

Malmö

Malmö is the third biggest city in Sweden. The Öresund bridge runs between Malmö and Danish capital Copenhagen.

Norrland

Almost everything north of Stockholm, roughly half the country. Save for a few cities along the coast there aren't many people, but there is an abundance of timber, iron ore and hydroelectricity. The far north is also the home of Sweden's indigenous population, the Sami people.

Culture

ABBA[note 5] was great overrated great.[note 6] And so are hot tubs.

It is also quite interesting to note that this part of the region which gave us those great pirates, pillagers, rapists and looters — the Vikings — managed to turn itself into one of the great liberal democracies of the world.[9] This is because Swedish Vikings contented themselves with peaceful exploration and trade in Eastern Europe, plus statebuilding in what's now Russia and Ukraine. They called themselves Rus' rather than Vikings and gave their name to Russia.[10]

It's a woman's life in the modern Sweden

Sweden is also often ranked as the country that is the most hospitable to women,[11] despite the bleak imagery of Stieg Larsson's immensely popular Millennium Trilogy.[note 7] Among the advantages for women:

• Swedish men do more housework than anywhere else in the world -- 24 hours per week.
• Swedish society does not frown on women who are sexually assertive.
• Sweden was the first nation to pass a parental leave law, which now allows up to a one-year leave.
• The Lutheran Church in Sweden was one of the first organized religions to permit female priests.
• One-third of all Swedish police officers are women.

So, about that far-right smear campaign...

“”What has he been smoking?

—Carl Bildt[12] on Trump's false depiction of Sweden[13]

InfoWars, the alt-right (and most recently Trump — see here) have all been active in a 10+ year-long attempt to falsely portray Sweden as being somehow "near collapse" or "on the brink".

The irony being that: actually, Alex and co., Sweden is not exactly doing badly compared to Texas (or to the US, generally). In fact, Sweden is doing pretty OK compared to just about the entire planet[14][15][16], by most metrics no less. You're welcome, Alex.

The fictional Swedish collapse is generally attributed to something like: Sweden being ravaged by a tsunami of Middle-Eastern/African islamist rapefugees, swarming in day and night — by the boatload — on an open invitation from some vaguely defined bleeding heart liberal/"anti-racist"/SJW majority.

The highly respected Sveriges Radio (something akin to the BBC of Sweden) has adressed this phenomenon in short:

• 'Sweden bashing' peaked during 2015 migration wave
• Police: There are no 'no-go zones' in Sweden
• Life in one of Sweden's 'particularly vulnerable areas'

Any skeptic who keeps running into these oft-repeated lies should be made aware that, unsurprisingly, the InfoWars/Breitbart narrative on Sweden is basically fake news (see Operation Swedistan).

No, Sweden is not the rape capital of Europe

Wingnuts commonly point out that Sweden's rape statistics are the highest in Europe and the second highest in the world,[17] and assert that Sweden accepting higher numbers of immigrants is clearly the cause of this. However, the real reason Sweden's rape statistics are so high is because the Swedish police are required to classify all reported rapes even if later investigation is unable to provide sufficient evidence for prosecution.[18]

Furthermore, a case involving multiple instances of rape count each incidence rather than the single case, so the total number is "bloated" in comparison to other countries. Then factor in that police actually investigate the claims without going out of their way to humiliate victims any further, and a higher percentage of rapes will be reported in the first place. Also Sweden has a very broad definition of rape and so actions which may not be considered rape in other countries get classified as such, and this legal change happened relatively recently.[19]

Rape is prosecuted regardless of whether the victim presses charges.[20]

Other

• A Swedish spruce tree has lived at peace for nearly 10,000 years. This spruce is the oldest known tree in the world.[note 8] It has been alive since before the creation of the world in 4004 BCE and even survived Noah's flood![21]
• Fred Phelps hated Sweden and claimed God did too.[note 9]
• Oh yeah! Sweden also legalized same-sex marriage in May 2009.[22] Woohoo!!

See also

• Sweden Democrats
• Nils Heribert Nilsson
• Olof Palme
• Thirty Years War, the conflict that temporarily turned Sweden into a regional power an empire.
• Notch
• Greta Thunberg

Externa länkar

• Swedishness on YouTube

Noter

1. Counting from Uppsala, which is a pretty good, central measuring spot - not too far north in the mountains, not too far south, but kinda sorta in the middle you see
2. We're specifically talking about the car divisions, both companies remain very well alive.
3. It's complicated to say the least.
4. Along with Norway and Finland, Sweden enjoys its own metal scene, as part of the Scandinavian scene, widely considered to be one of the world's greatest metal scenes.
5. To be accurate, ABBA was only 75% Swedish. One member was half-Norwegian and half-German. But, that's not her fault.
6. Although you have to wonder if they would've gained the same level of fame if they had been as drunk in concert as they were when they made their 1970 TV debut as a group. (And how the hell did the get Reuben Kincaid from The Partridge Family and Frank Gorshin to play the sheriff and his deputy?)
7. It's original Swedish title translates as "Men Who Hate Women," and involves a fair amount of characters that do just that.
8. It's actually a clonal tree; the oldest individual tree is still a bristlecone pine in California. If we are counting clonal colonies, there's a 500,000 year old clonal colony of aspen trees in Utah.
9. But let's be fair. Ask anybody in Sweden about Fred Phelps and they'll say what most Americans would say: "Fred who?"

Referenser

1. Wikipedia's nice summary of said report.
2. See the Wikipedia article on Importance of religion by country.
3. See the Wikipedia article on List of U.S. states by religiosity.
4. Davidson, Kavitha A. (21 March 2013). "Democracy Index 2013: Global Democracy At A Standstill, The Economist Intelligence Unit's Annual Report Shows". The Huffington Post.
5. "2013 Human Development Report". United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
6. "OECD Better Life Index". OECD Publishing. Retrieved 27 August 2013.
7. "2013 Legatum Prosperity Index™: Global prosperity rising while US and UK economies decline". Legatum. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
8. "Global Competitiveness Report 2012–2013". World Economic Forum. 5 September 2012. Retrieved 9 June 2013.
9. Then and Now
10. Wladyslaw Duczko. Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe
11. The World's Best Country for Women, Marie Claire
12. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/833219648044855296
13. Daniel Marans, Donald Trump Appears To Make Up Sweden Terror Attack, Huffington Post
14. https://goodcountry.org/index/overall-rankings
15. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2816%2931467-2/fulltext
16. http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/infographics/sdg/sdg_w600.jpg
17. "swedish prof: Hot weather, not rapey migrants driving Sweden's place as the rape capital of the world" on Breitbart
18. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/crime-sweden-rape-capital-europe/
19. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19592372
20. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1008713631586
21. Swedes find 'world's oldest tree', BBC News
22. Sweden allows same-sex marriage, BBC News

Nations of the world

Africa:Algeria — Democratic Republic of the Congo — Egypt — Eritrea — eSwatini — Ethiopia — Guinea — Kenya — Liberia — Libya — Mali — Nigeria — Somalia — South Africa — Sudan — Togo — Uganda — Zimbabwe

Asia: Afghanistan — Armenia — Azerbaijan — Bahrain — Bangladesh — Brunei — Burma — Cambodia — China — Cyprus — Egypt — Georgia — India — Indonesia — Iran — Iraq — Israel — Japan — Jordan — Kazakhstan — Kuwait — Kyrgyzstan — Laos — Lebanon — Malaysia — Maldives — Mongolia — Nepal — North Korea — Oman — Pakistan — Philippines — Qatar — Russia — Saudi Arabia — Singapore — South Korea — Syria — Tajikistan — Thailand — Timor-Leste — Turkey — Turkmenistan — United Arab Emirates — Uzbekistan — Vietnam — Yemen

Europe: Austria — Belarus — Belgium — Bosnia and Herzegovina — Bulgaria — Croatia — Cyprus — Czechia — Denmark — Estonia — Finland — France — Germany — Greece — Hungary — Iceland — Ireland — Isle of Man — Italy — Latvia — Lithuania — Moldova — Netherlands — North Macedonia — Norway — Poland — Portugal — Romania — Russia — Serbia — Slovenia — Spain — Sweden — Switzerland — Turkey — Ukraine — United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales) — Vatican City

North America: Canada — Costa Rica — Cuba — Grenada — Haiti — Jamaica — Mexico — Nicaragua — Panama — United States

Oceania: Australia — Kiribati — Nauru — New Zealand — Papua New Guinea — Pitcairn Islands

South America:Argentina — Bolivia — Brazil — Chile — Colombia — Ecuador — Falkland Islands (Malvinas)— Paraguay — Uruguay — Venezuela

Historical, separatist or disputed: Ancient Egypt — Belgian Congo — British Empire — Catalonia — Confederate States of America — Czechoslovakia — East Germany — French colonial empire — German Empire - Greenland — Holy Roman Empire — Imperial China — Kurdistan — Kosovo — Micronation — Nazi Germany — Palestine — Roman Empire — Soviet Union — Taiwan — Tibet — Vichy France — Western Sahara — Yugoslavia