Sweden - Becky Ohlsen [15]
Two vital concepts in the typical Swede’s mindset are lagom and ordning och reda. Lagom means ‘just right’ – not too little, not too much. A good example is mellanöl (medium ale) – it’s not strong, but not as weak as a light ale. An exception to lagom is the smörgåsbord.
Ordning och reda connotes tidiness and order: everything in its proper place in the world. A good example is the queuing system; almost every transaction in Sweden requires participants to take a number and stand in line, which everyone does with the utmost patience. An exception to ordning och reda is Stockholm traffic.
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LIFESTYLE
Swedes are a friendly sort. Var så god is a common phrase and carries all sorts of expressions of goodwill: ‘Welcome’, ‘Please’, ‘Pleased to meet you’, ‘I’m happy to serve you’, ‘Thanks’ and ‘You’re welcome’. Swedes are so generous with their use of ‘thank you’ (tack) that language texts make jokes about it.
It wasn’t until the 1930s that urban Swedes surpassed the number of rural Swedes, and even the most seasoned urbanites commonly retain a strong affinity with nature. The rural sommarstuga (summer cottage) is almost de rigueur, with 600,000 second homes in the country. Indeed, Sweden boasts the highest number of holiday cottages per capita in the world.
Another common sight is dishy dads pushing baby strollers. Gender equality has advanced further in Sweden than in most countries. The government has a Minister for Integration and Gender Equality, as well as the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman, the latter ensuring that all employers and institutions of learning actively promote gender equality and prevent sexual discrimination. Women make up around 47% of parliament members in the Riksdag and enjoy enviable childcare services.
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Almost 70% of Swedish fathers take parental leave, compared to the EU average of only one in three.
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On the flipside, a Swedish study released in 2001 found that 46% of females over the age of 15 who were interviewed had been subjected to violence. In 2006, around 25,500 cases of male violence against women were reported, with many experts believing that the real number is around five times higher.
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POPULATION
Sweden’s population is relatively small given the size of the country – it has one of the lowest population densities in Europe. Most of the population is concentrated in the large cities of Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö and Uppsala. Conversely, the interior of Norrland is sparsely populated.
The majority of Sweden’s population is considered to be of Nordic stock, thought to have descended from central and northern European tribes that migrated north after the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago.
About 30,000 Finnish speakers form a substantial minority in the northeast, near Torneälven (Torne River). More than 160,000 citizens of other Nordic countries live in Sweden.
About 15% of Sweden’s population are either foreign-born or have at least one non-Swedish parent. Most immigrants have come from other European countries, including Russia, the former Yugoslavia, Poland and Greece. The largest non-European ethnic group is made up of Middle Eastern citizens, primarily from Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Other countries with a sizeable presence include Chile and Somalia. There are also around 45,000 Roma.
Sami
With around 15,000 people, the indigenous Sami people (sometimes inappropriately termed ‘Lapps’) are a significant ethnic minority. For centuries they’ve roamed northern Scandinavia and northwest Russia, living mainly from large herds of domestic reindeer. These days, around 10% of Sami live from reindeer husbandry, with many more having migrated to Sweden’s industrialised south in search of work. The total Sami population (around 60,000) forms an ethnic minority in four countries: Norway,