Sweden

Sweden which occupies the eastern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, is the fourth-largest country in Europe. It has thousands of coastal islands, inland lakes, forests and mountains. Its principal cities, eastern capital Stockholm and southwestern Gothenburg and Malmö, are all on the sea. The country slopes eastward and southward from the Kjólen Mountains along the Norwegian border, where the peak elevation is Kebnekaise at 6,965 ft (2,123 m) in Lapland. In the north are mountains and many lakes. To the south and east are central lowlands and south of them are fertile areas of forest, valley, and plain. Along Sweden's rocky coast, chopped up by bays and inlets, are many islands, the largest of which are Gotland and Öland. Stockholm is home to royal palaces, parkland and museums such as open-air Skansen. Its 13th-century old town, Gamla Stan, is set on islands joined by bridges and ferries.

Public policy and politics

After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995, but declined NATO membership, as well as Eurozone membership following a referendum. It is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 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

Sweden has one of the most highly developed welfare states in the world. According to a 2012 OECD report, the country had the second-highest public social spending as a percentage of its GDP after France (27.3% and 28.4%, respectively), and the third-highest total (public and private) social spending at 30.2% of its GDP, after France and Belgium (31.3% and 31.0%, respectively).[182] Sweden spent 6.3% of its GDP, the 9th-highest among 34 OECD countries, to provide equal access to education. On health care, the country spent 10.0% of its total GDP, the 12th highest.

Historically, Sweden provided solid support for free trade (except agriculture) and mostly relatively strong and stable property rights (both private and public), though some economists have pointed out that Sweden promoted industries with tariffs and used publicly subsidized R&D during the country's early critical years of industrialization.After World War II a succession of governments expanded the welfare state by raising the taxes. During this period Sweden's economic growth was also one of the highest in the industrial world. A series of successive social reforms transformed the country into one of the most equal and developed on earth. The consistent growth of the welfare state led to Swedes achieving unprecedented levels of social mobility and quality of life—to this day Sweden consistently ranks at the top of league tables for health, literacy and Human Development—far ahead of some wealthier countries (for example the United States).

However, from the 1970s and on wards Sweden's GDP growth fell behind other industrialized countries and the country's per capita ranking fell from 4th to 14th place in a few decades. From the mid-1990s until today Sweden's economic growth has once again accelerated and has been higher than in most other industrialized countries (including the US) during the last 15 years. A report from the United Nations Development Program predicted that Sweden's rating on the Human Development Index will fall from 0.949 in 2010 to 0.906 in 2030.

Sweden began slowing the expansion of the welfare state in the 1980s, and even trimming it back, and according to the OECD and McKinsey, Sweden has recently been relatively quick to adopt economic liberalization policies, such as deregulation, compared to countries such as France. The current Swedish government is continuing the trend of moderate rollbacks of previous social reforms. Growth has been higher than in many other EU-15 countries. Also since the mid-1980s, Sweden has had the fastest growth in inequality of any developed nation, according to the OECD. This has largely been attributed to the reduction in state benefits and a shift toward the privatization of public services. According to Barbro Sorman, an activist of the opposition Left Party, "The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. Sweden is starting to look like the USA." Nevertheless, it remains far more egalitarian than most nations. Partly as a result of these privatizations and widening economic disparity, the Swedes in the 2014 elections put the Social Democrats back in power.

Sweden adopted free market agricultural policies in 1990. Since the 1930s, the agricultural sector had been subject to price controls. In June 1990, the Riksdag voted for a new agricultural policy marking a significant shift away from price controls. As a result, food prices fell somewhat. However, the liberalizations soon became moot because EU agricultural controls supervened

Capital: Stockholm
Dialing code: +46
ISO code: SWE
Currency: Swedish krona
Official language: Swedish

Land area: 158,927 sq mi (411,621 sq km); total area: 173,731 sq mi (449,964 sq km)

Population (2014 est.): 9,723,809 (growth rate: 0.79%); birth rate: 11.92/1000; infant mortality rate: 2.6/1000; life expectancy: 81.89; density per sq mi: 55.6

Capital and largest city (2014 est.): Stockholm, 1.372 million

Other large cities (2014 est.): Göteborg, 536,790; Malmö, 303,873

Monetary unit: Krona

Government

Constitutional monarchy.
Sovereign: King Carl XVI Gustaf (1973)

Prime Minister: Stefan Löfven (2014)
Socialist Policy Dominates Sweden for Most of the 20th Century and Into the 21st.

The earliest historical mention of Sweden is found in Tacitus's Germania, where reference is made to the powerful king and strong fleet of the Sviones. In the 11th century, Olaf Sköttkonung became the first Swedish king to be baptized as a Christian. Around 1400, an attempt was made to unite Sweden, Norway, and Denmark into one kingdom, but this led to bitter strife between the Danes and the Swedes. In 1520, the Danish king Christian II conquered Sweden and in the “Stockholm Bloodbath” put leading Swedish personages to death. Gustavus Vasa (1523–1560) broke away from Denmark and fashioned the modern Swedish state. He also confiscated property from the Roman Catholic Church in Sweden to pay Sweden's war debts. The king justified his actions on the basis of Martin Luther's doctrines, which were being accepted nationwide with royal encouragement. The Lutheran Swedish church was eventually adopted as the state church.

Sweden played a leading role in the second phase (1630–1635) of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). By the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), Sweden obtained western Pomerania and some neighboring territory on the Baltic. In 1700, a coalition of Russia, Poland, and Denmark united against Sweden and by the Peace of Nystad (1721) forced it to relinquish Livonia, Ingria, Estonia, and parts of Finland. Sweden emerged from the Napoleonic Wars with the acquisition of Norway from Denmark and with a new royal dynasty stemming from Marshal Jean Bernadotte of France, who became King Charles XIV (1818–1844). The artificial union between Sweden and Norway led to an uneasy relationship, and the union was finally dissolved in 1905. Sweden maintained a position of neutrality in both world wars.

Swedish food is and forever will be associated with meatballs, flying utensils and the phrase 'bork bork bork'. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – meatballs are a well-loved staple, an important part of the tradition of Swedish home cooking known as husmanskost. But there’s much more than Swedish meatballs for the visiting gourmand to sample.
Husmanskost: classic Swedish home cooking

Historically in Sweden, the growing season was short and harsh weather conditions made it difficult to transport produce for much of the year. Sweden is sparsely populated and, from tip to tail, makes for quite a trek through the wilderness, particularly in winter. So the country’s eating and cooking habits developed around a reverence for hyper-local, seasonal ingredients and interesting methods of preservation.

For example, each province makes its own trademark variety of cheese (Västerbotten’s is a favourite – you can usually find wedges of it at IKEA). Regions tend to build their go-to menu items around ingredients that are readily available from local farms and forests. Anything that needs to be shipped or stored is cured, dried, pickled or canned.

The need to preserve short-lived delicacies has led over the years to such ubiquitous Swedish favorites as gravad lax (thin slices of cured salmon), pickled herring, filmjölk (fermented milk, a bit like buttermilk), lingonberry jam and various liqueurs. It has also created a national obsession with seasonal foods like cloudberries, chanterelle mushrooms and crayfish. Swedes have a stark appreciation for the fleetingness of seasons – they come and go quickly here, especially in the far north, and their bounty must be seized and enjoyed while it can. Of course, these days it’s possible to buy strawberries all winter, or boil crayfish any time you like – but this misses the point. Generally speaking, Swedish cuisine holds to a certain order.

With all that in mind, here are some basics of husmanskost, most of which any visitor to Sweden will encounter:

Meatballs: strictly speaking, traditional Swedish meatballs are made with specific proportions of ground beef, pork and veal, and are served with gravy, lingonberries and boiled or mashed new potatoes.

Herring: you’ll find this little fish pickled, fried, mushed into salads or rolled up into flatbread wraps, with any of a number of regionally specific sauces. In Swedish it’s called either called sil or strömming, depending on which coast it comes from. Something to note but not necessarily try yourself is surströmming – canned fermented herring, an annual sensory nightmare you’ll be able to smell from miles away. In a similar category is lutfisk, a holiday 'treat' consisting of dried cod preserved in lye (yes, lye, the caustic chemical normally used in soapmaking) and reconstituted to form a pale, gelatinous mass eaten with butter or bechamel sauce and green peas. Mmm!

Reindeer: this might sound a little strange until you go to Northern Sweden and realize that reindeer here are just ordinary livestock. Reindeer meat forms the core of the cuisine of the Sami, Northern Scandinavia’s native people. It’s prepared in every imaginable way, from dried to cured to pickled to smoked to roasted, often with seasonal berry-based sauces. Unlike lutfisk or surströmming, it requires neither practice nor a stubborn nature to enjoy; if you see it on a menu, give it a try.