Sweden

Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden (Swedish: Konungariket Sverige), is a Scandinavian country in the northern European Union. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, and is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund. At 450,295 square kilometres (173,860 sq mi), Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of over 9.8 million. Sweden consequently has a low population density of 21 inhabitants per square kilometre (54/sq mi), with the highest concentration in the southern half of the country. Approximately 85% of the population lives in urban areas.

Quotes[edit]

Societies’ values can change over time, of course. Swedish soldiers were once the terror of Europe when now we associate Sweden with the Nobel Peace Prize or international mediation. Steven Pinker has argued that much of the West has, at least since the eighteenth century, moved away from accepting violence as natural or desirable.
- Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020)
Sweden is now down to 50th in the ranking of total Covid deaths per capita since the pandemic began. Almost every other country ranked above Sweden had lockdowns, mask mandates and draconian restrictions. Sweden meanwhile, largely kept its society open and freedoms intact.
- James Melville, Twitter, 3:31 AM · Oct 10, 2021

Actually, the Swedish genealogists were so good that I found out more than I wanted to about my Swedish ancestors: one of them in the 17th century was executed for having embezzled funds from an estate for which he was the steward... As for the name Rehnquist, I am quite uncertain as to its origin. Under the Swedish patronymic system of naming, my grandfather and his brothers would have been named Anderson, since Anders was the name of their father. "Quist" in Swedish means branch, I am told. For example, "Lindquist" means lime branch or linden branch, and Palmquist means palm branch. The best I can come up with is that the "rehn" in my name refers to a small village near the farm on which my grandfather grew up. It has been said that Sweden's loss has been America's gain, and I think this is true. Swedish immigrants and their descendents have contributed a great deal to America and it is worthwhile to remember our Swedish heritage.
- William Rehnquist, address at a Swedish Colonial Society luncheon in Philadelphia (9 April 2001).

International comparisons have shown that no other OECD country performs worse than Sweden in terms of integrating immigrants in the labor market... The unemployment rate is 18 percent among immigrants, compared to 7 percent among the native born. The explanation is hardly that immigrants enjoy being unemployed. Studies show that unemployed immigrants in Sweden search far more intensely for work than unemployed Swedes, but often have their job applications ignored. Due to low employment rates, 57 percent of welfare payments in Sweden in 2012 went to immigrant households.
- Tino Sanandaji, "On Swedish Billionaires" (17 November 2013), National Review

When you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States. You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we’re not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have — we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth. Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.
- Bernie Sanders, quoted on Fortune (February 17, 2016), "Bernie Sanders Was Right: Denmark Is the Best Nation for Working People"

Sweden has taken in far more refugees per capita than any country in Europe. But in doing so, it’s tearing itself apart.
- James Traub, "The Death of the Most Generous Nation on Earth" (10 February 2016), Foreign Policy

Before the [Second World] war, Jews from Nazi Germany sought asylum in Sweden. Although a few were accepted, the majority were rejected due to anti-semitism and discriminatory racial ideology prevalent in Sweden at that time. Afraid of the rise in anti-semitism, leaders of the Jewish community in Sweden supported a restrictive asylum policy. The most important reason that many Jews were rejected was due to the fact that the Swedish government strove to avoid conflict with Nazi Germany.
- Charles Westin, "Sweden: Restrictive Immigration Policy and Multiculturalism" (1 June 2006), Migration Policy Institute

In Sweden, diversity is not their strength. Homogeneity is... Sweden’s more liberal policy toward immigrants may be judged in no small part by the Stockholm riots of 2013.
- Kevin D. Williamson, "Homogenity is Their Strength" (10 August 2014), National Review

In reality, economic xenophobia and ordinary xenophobia always end up colliding. The nastier of Europe’s anti-immigrant and ethno-nationalist movements argue that ethnic solidarity is necessary to preserve the welfare state. Among ordinary Swedes, the topic of immigrants’ — non-Nordic people’s — relatively high rates of unemployment and welfare dependency is politically charged.
- Kevin D. Williamson, "The Whitest Privilege" (8 July 2015), National Review

Czarniecki to Poznań returned across the sea to save his homeland after the Swedish partition.
- Józef Wybicki, "Mazurek Dąbrowskiego" (1747), the Polish national anthem
- Original Polish: Czarniecki do Poznania wracał się przez morze dla ojczyzny ratowania po szwedzkim rozbiorze.