Swedes Answer to Questions

I have prepared this Answers-to-Questions because i think Swedes is a rather interesting people (i'm one of them myself, despite that my Vallonian/possibly German 10% heritage make me a little emotionally aberrant). I have also prepared it in order to see what advantages/disadvantages it is for me to live in Sweden.

1. What is the Swedish attitude towards foreigners?

Swedes are known to be tolerant, also towards foreigners. Tourists are of course welcome, because they gives us an opportunity to be proud of our country. We haven't had a war in 300 years, so we welcome every nationality of course. Sorry to say, foreign peoples tend to be classified in two cathegories: foreigners from successful industrial nations and the rest. This tend to be more visible when immigrating to Sweden. Swedes usually know where a certain nation in the world are situated, but they don't know very much about the history of other nations than USA, England and Germany, so they are definitely understating the value of other foreigners.

There is (of course) rasism and animosity against strangers in Sweden, but all political parties, all press and mass media, all intelligentia and most of the upper/middle/lower class is very strongly opposed against rasism and foreigner animosity. There was a foreigner animous political party "Ny Demokrati" that popped up fast to 5% and almost as fast were verbally battered down to dust by mass media.

Hidden behind the outward scene, there might be problems in moving to Sweden, because of administration and employment issues which makes it troublesome to be fully integrated in the Swedish system.

2. What are Swedes eating?

The Swedes tend to be rather curious about foreign food, and eat hamburgers, Chinese food and pizza as well as traditional Swedish food.

3. What is the typical Swedish food like?

Milk in almost everything, a tendency to add jam to everything, and fat thick sauces of milk, flour and soya. Traditional dishes include:

Kåldolmar - a traditional Turkish dish with meat and rice wrapped in cabbage served with potatoes, brown sauce (milk+flour+soya) and lingonberry jam. Imported during the Swedish-Turkish war against Russia in the 1700:ies.
Biff med lök - beef of grinded meat, potatoes, brown sauce with onion and lingonberry jam.
Ärtsoppa - pie soup prepared from yellow dried pies and containing pork (or more seldomly: onion). It's a tradition often broken against to eat Ärtsoppa at Thursday. It's most often eaten with mustard. No milk ingredient, and no lingonberry jam!
Rotmos med fläsk - mashed turnips with pork (or more traditionally mutton).
Blodpudding med fläsk - a blood pudding prepared from blood, meat and milk, served with bacon or fried pork and (of course) lingonberry jam. Not very appreciated, but cheap.

What is atypical Swedish food like?

Most reknowned of the atypical Swedish food is Surströmming - Sour Herring, which is in fact fermented herring, and smells heavily from ethyl mercaptane, C₂H₅SH, which is in the Guinness Book of Records for smelling bad in low concentration (and worse in high concentration, logically). Northern Swedes are reputed to eat this with potatoes or wrapped by tunnbröd (unfermented bread prepared on wheat, salt and water), and large amounts of vodka. Reactions of eaters vary between deepest enjoyment and horrific shouts of disgust. I will try one day, of course guided by some Norrlandians who know the proper preparations.
Many Swedes eat crayfish especially at the time of Kräftpremiären. The crayfishes are served cooked in salted water with dill. To the crayfish bread is eaten, and brandy or vodka is drunk. Crayfish tastes fine, approximately like prawn, but the shells have to be removed manually.
Gotlandians use to eat Lambhuvud, cooked Sheep-heads. I don't know if it tastes good or not, but they look a little bit ugly.

Speaking of food, one may immediatelly reflect on what Swedes drink. In the 1960-1980:ies Swedes generally preferred milk before, juice and lemonade and light beer. Swedes don't drink alcoholic drinks (except light beer) at lunch, because of Swedish laws (and labor union moral) against drugs at job. The evening dinner is a private matter. Nowadays milk have lost its popularity, so water, juice and light beer dominate.

Swedes alcohol usage is of the alround kind: beer (i like Guinness, but my stomach does not), vodka, wine, drinks consisted by lemonade and this and that alcoholic ingredient is a tasteless (or bad-tasting) and barbaric custom, that all the worse also have spread to US!

Swedes generally drink moderately in Sweden, but when coming abroad some of them drink themselves stoned (or maybe rubbered?) and behave extremely bad, which is a known fact in Austrian tourist places for example. We decent Swedes are very embarassed by this behaviour, and collectively apologize for our sucker idiot fellow compatriots! (I just thought about some proposals what to do about them ... but i'll leave that for another time).

4. Are Swedes very emotionally cold?

Yes and no. Swedes tend to be shy and cautious. They generally associate with a small company of friends and relatives. Foreigners coming to Sweden report that it is hard to get Swedish friends, but it's not impossible. When learning to know Swedes foreigners tend to be surprised/confused by a few facts:

When learning to know Swedes superficially they are surprisingly open and honest - which doesn't necessarily means that you've gotten a near friendship;
It's possible to associate with Swedes on a friend basis, but Swedes are organizing their spare time very much, so you have to make appointments and prepare for some activity - go to a museum, listen to a consert or eat on a restaurant;
When on restaurant or in a bar, offering the whole payment is not common (but of course appreciated), but don't expect Swedes to offer back, despite being a rather social community there is a certain codex of maintaining independence kept to be self dependent that is very typical for Swedes;
Swedes can be silent in company - this doesn't mean an act of impoliteness, the Swedish culture requires that one speaks when one has anything important to say. This doesn't however mean that everybody can be silent on a party, there are always somebody speaking, but it is not considered impolite to just sit and listen silently.
Another possible difference with peoples in general may be the typical Swedish balancing between humour and seriousness, which can change very quickly and subtilely. For comparance with other nationalities, its like a milder and politer variant of English humour. Even at serious meeting jokes occur, but the order is fastly restored (by sort of a common agreement) and the points on the agenda is handled in a swift and concentrated order, generally commented amusingly. After the meeting people disperse, because the funny part have ended.
The consensus thinking of Swedes is not always a good thing. Swedes may make a good use of "Devil's Advocates" like USA:nians and Englishfolks.

5. Swedish sounds very funny. Is it hard to learn?

Yes, Swedish sounds very peculiar due to its accent. The accent serves to mark the beginning and ends of the words, thereby nicely enhancing the listeners avareness of the structure of the sentence. It is hard to communicate Swedish with Swedes without learning this accent, but it can be learnt with a reasonable effort (there are dedicated learning books for this). The consonantic and vocalic system is complicated, but abberations in pronounciation from standard Swedish are very common in different Swedish dialects, so that can be tolerated. The grammar is somewhat easier than German. Icelandic, Maltese and Japanese are much harder nuts to crack. I would think as hard as learning French, not worse.

An incomplete phonological description:

'och' (Eng. 'and') is pronounced 'okk', or more often 'o' like in in an ultra-short Eng. 'ore'. The 'okk' pronunciation is artificial, the 'o' pronunciation is the naturally developed one.
å is pronounced like o in Eng. 'for'.
ä is pronounced like ea in Eng. 'head'.
ö is pronounced like in German.
y is pronounced like German 'ü'.
o is a chaos - sometimes it is pronounced like oo in 'foot' and sometimes like aw in 'hawk'. The school-taught rules only makes an approximation.
in stressed syllables k and g are mostly "weakened" before ä, e, i and y, so that 'kemisk' (chemical) is pronounced like 'sheamisk' ('ea' like in 'fear', 'i' like in 'fish'), and 'gift' (married) like 'yift' ('i' like in 'fish'). This rule have a lot of exceptions, like that the weakening may occur in unstressed syllables, and that the weakening may not occur in stressed syllables. In northern parts of Sweden weakened k is rather pronounced like 'ch' like in 'church'.
Tj and kj are pronounced like weakened k, with the same dialectal variations.
Sk is similarly weakened before ä, e, i, and y, to a sound that in Northern Sweden is like a darkened variant of Eng. 'sh', but in southern part like a unique phoneme, that may be described as an intermediate between German 'ch' in 'ich' and 'ch' like in 'Aachen', most often also with a rounded mouth like in Eng. 'w'. It may also be somewhat similar to dialectal soundless 'wh' like in some Eng. and USA dialect's 'white'.
Stj, skj are pronounced like weakened sk, with the same dialectal variations.
Dj, gj and lj are pronounced like weakened g.
Nj and bj are pronounced like they are spelled, i.e. as [ny] in Eng. 'new' and [by] in Eng. 'beautiful'.
Etc. ... horrific rules

In short: Swedish spelling is in chaos, and is in a greet need for a thought-through reform.

In Sweden we have a couple of other native languages: Three Sami Languages - distantly related to Finnish, an aberrant dialect of Finnish - Tornedalian Finnish, and a set of "dialects" of Swedish - Dalekarlian - which is completely incomprehensible for true Swedish speakers. In my personal opinion it is completely misleading to label Dalekarlian as a dialect - it should be viewed as a separate language. On the other hand Swedes and Norwegians understand each other without much trouble, and Danish understand Norwegians and Swedes, although the reverse is generally not true, because the Danish swallow half the words and replace them with glottal stops and guttural gargles here and there. (That is a scientfic fact, for true!).

6. Are Swedes Manufacturing Clocks in the Swedish Alps?

You, probably refer to Switzerland. Swedes manufacture cars (SAAB and Volvo) and aeroplanes (SAAB) in the Scandinavian flatland. Also we manufacture mobile telephones (Ericsson), and a lot of medicines and other products.

7. Why is the Swedish people so economically successful?

The small (9 millions) Swedish people is extraordinarily economically successful. The reason for this is commonly attributed to four factors:

Sweden is situated in Europe - pure luck! But the European nations have influenced each other for more than 300 years to develop manufactures and industry.
Sweden was not in Second World War - during the WWII, Sweden was neutral, and succeeded to avoid become occupied by Germany. This is generally attributed to a cooperation diplomacy in regard to Germany that afterwards have been very criticized. Sometimes it is believed that the fact that Hermann Göring's first wife was Swedish might have had a considerable influence on the Nazi decision regarding not invading Sweden. The consequence was that while the rest of Europe was in ruins, Swedish industry was fully intact after the War, and in some cases richer by war profit.
Sweden has been a democracy since 1921 - at which time the women gained universal suffrage. The democracy have been in power since then.
Social democracy (political hot-stuff!) The labour unions gained strong Power by early social democratic political dominance. Since the Nordic labour unions worked for equal wages irrespective of company, the economically weaker companies were removed faster than in other countries. The survivors grew faster than in competing nations. So Sweden in the 1980:ies had 8 huge companies, few middle-sized, and many small ones. The 8 huge ones constitute the economical strength of Sweden today.
Swedish working life culture - more about that below.

People from foreign cultures sometimes remark Swedish working culture as one of the most positive aspect of living in Sweden.

8. Isn't It Hard to Fence of the Ice Bears all the Time?

We don't know. Our climate is temperate and we have a lot of brown bears (considerably smaller than grizzlies), elks, a few wolves and lynxes. In the Scandian mountains (Fjällen) there are reindeers. We don't have land contact with the pack ice of the Arctic, so the ice bears can't come here. Car collisions with elks is a considerable problem, and farmers are warry of wolves and bears. The Sami people of the northern Scandinavia, herding reindeers, is experiencing problems with carnivores and over-crowded herds of reindeer.

9. Is the Swedish world view similar to the Viking world view?

Not at all! The Vikings adhered Asatru (paganism with the gods Thor, Wodan and Tyr), the modern Swedes are generally ateists or agnostics, with a substantial minority being protestant Christians belonging to the Swedish Church. The Vikings were said to be clan organized with a very strong codex of honor and capability of war and defense for their clan. The Swedes are generally law obedient modest people, putting a great proudness of being professionally skilled, avoiding conflicts, boasts and brag-abouts, shyness is accepted and sometimes appreciated. They are afraid of rain too, so there is not much left of the Viking braveness. There is sometimes a cautious and reserved proudness of the Viking heritage and the possible relation to the Goths, but this is seldom seen as a ground for boasting chauvinism.

10. Were the Swedes really Vikings?

Genetically we are probably two thirds Vikings and one third Low Germans. The Low German influence at Sweden in the medievals was immense. To be very precize the two third Viking part is rather to be termed a Væring part. The Vikings (mostly from Denmark and Norway) used to attack and plunder western Europe cities, the Danes invaded the main part of England, but the Værings (Varjags according to Russian) were more often performing trade with the east, notably Constantinopolis, Bulgars and Kazars. In that process retaining points were errected in Slavic areas, and on some places the Slavic population was organized (the Republic of Novgorod and the early Russia). The Icelandic population is however, according to genetical research, 100% Vikings.

11. Are Swedes really barbarians?

Well, rather no than yes. They are not likely to start conflicts, they don't consider it being good style to walk in fur. They are aggressively negative against bull-fights and similar mistreatment of animals, they consider it being very rude to hit women and children. However they don't always wash their hands before dinner, when they drink liquor they drink themselves considerably drunk, they walk in-house without shoes, say Du (Thou, You in singular) to everybody (including superiors and foreigners), and are not addressing people with titles. The last fact is due to the very egalitarian attitude of Swedes against each other. Some Swedes use snuff (like myself), which is very barbaric! A lot of Swedes smoke too, which is not especially barbaric, but very stupid and inconsiderate.

12. What does it mean to move into Sweden?

If you've come here as a refugee or by other means without having an employment here, becoming integrated in Sweden might be somewhat troublesome. The general administrative problems are solved very easily - the Gordic Knot is the person number system: as soon as you've gotten yourself a person number, all bureaucracy recognizes you. Of course you have to fill in papers here, leave them there, and such things as normal Western bureaucracies make a sport of, but it is rather OK, by Western standards.

The attitude of the Swedish Immigrant Agency is that you by default is a parasite coming here to be rich without working. (That's a common impression by contacts of mine, foreigners as well as by my mom, who was working inside). The Swedish Immigrant Agency have a notorious reputation for rejecting refugees who risk severe oppression in the countries they are fleeing, so they cannot be called just. But if you have the right reasons, and don't have really bad luck, you will get admission.

If you have gotten an employment in Sweden there are much fewer problems, but if you later become unemployed (despite working here for say 10 years), it is not obvious for them that you deserve permanent residence here, despite it is obvious for everybody else. But that is just in rare cases - normally it is easier than that.

There are school institutions for educating all newcomers, and the quality of the education seems to be rather OK, except that the bureaucracy almost require you to be educated in this and that college stuff that you've already read at home. You really must go the Swedish courses, of course, anyone can understand that, and a course to enhance your engineering education with Swedish terminology is fine. There are such courses, but sorry to say they have too few applicants to integrate well educated foreigners as fast as would be effective. There is one important problem with the Swedish language courses: they are not exercising the peculiar Swedish prosody (accent) good enough, which mostly seems to be required by companies when applying for employments in Sweden. You need to exercise yourself by putting on National Radio (four channels) and imitate the speakers there. Funny but necessary.

13. What does it mean to live and work by Swedes?

Living by the Swedes might be lonesome before you learn to know some personal friends. Swedes generally have little contacts with neighbors, in the town/city people move around in small friend companies, but you may have more success there. Swedes do speak with foreigners now and then, but less seldom than most other Europaeans. I don't have much experience by myself, but try a bar.

Working by Swedes is known to be an unusual experience. First of all it is very hard to recognize who is in Power, and who obeys. The bosses deal in most enterprises almost exclusively by administrative matters and defining/promoting projects, and give the employes very much freedom and responsibility on how to solve individual problems. It is sometimes tough for the employee, but adds very much to experience and often also to the enthusiasm/loyalty. Also the interaction between collaboration partners is left very much free for the employee to decide, and the strict codex of hierarchy - asking some boss first - typical for many Europaean countries, is maintained mainly just for crucial decisions. On most occations this makes task solving effective and fast. As an illustration, Swedish building workers are known to be able to perform other tasks beside their ordinary specialty, carpeters can be put on masonry, masoners on nailing, aso.. This is a common trait to the majority of Swedish companies, institutions and agencies.