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. It also is a member of NATO. 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. Its head of state is King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, and its head of government is Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

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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

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

America is a founding member of NATO, the military alliance of democratic nations created after World War Two prevent -- to prevent war and keep the peace. And today, we've made NATO stronger than ever. We welcomed Finland to the Alliance last year. And just this morning, Sweden officially joined, and their minister is here tonight. Stand up. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And they know how to fight. Mr. Prime Minister, welcome to NATO, the strongest military alliance the world has ever seen.
- Joe Biden, 2024 State of the Union Address, delivered 7 March 2024

There was every reason to believe that Sweden would be the next victim of Germany or Russia, or perhaps even both. If Sweden came to the aid of her agonised neighbor, the military situation would be for the time being transformed. The Swedes had a good army. They could enter Norway easily. They could be at Trondheim in force before the Germans. We could join them there. But what would be the fate of Sweden in the months that followed? Hitler's vengeance would lay them low, and the Bear would maul them from the East. On the other hand the Swedes could purchase neutrality by supplying the Germans with all the iron ore they wanted throughout the approaching summer. For Sweden the choice was a profitable neutrality or subjugation. She could not be blamed because she did not view the issue from the standpoint of our unready but now eager island.
- Winston Churchill, The First World War Volume I: The Gathering Storm (1948)

The Northmen are often said to have burst out of their coastal settlements in what is now Sweden, Norway, and Denmark at the end of the eighth century. The most famous account of their arrival into the Christian realms of the west comes from Britain. In 793 warriors appeared off the coast of Northumbria, leaped from their ships, and robbed the island of Lindisfarne, desecrating the monastery and murdering its brothers. This ferocious raid sent shock waves rippling out from Britain. When the news reached Charlemagne’s court in Aachen, Alcuin of York wrote to the king of Northumbria, deploring the fact that “the church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans.” He suggested to the king that he and his noblemen might mend their ways, starting by adopting more Christian haircuts and clothing styles. But it was too late for any of that. The Northmen had announced themselves as a major power in the western world. The next year, 794, raiders appeared on the other side of the British Isles, in the Hebrides. In 799 Vikings raided the monastery of Saint-Philibert at Noirmoutier, just to the south of the river Loire. Sixty years later Viking raids would be a painful feature of life not only in the North and Irish Seas but as far away as Lisbon, Seville, and north Africa, as Northmen tangled with Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Umayyads, and Franks. In 860 a band of Viking-descended warriors from what is now northwest Russia even sailed to Constantinople via the river Dnieper and the Black Sea, and laid the city under siege. Although exposed only to a tiny part of this, the chronicler of Noirmoutier wrote what could have been an epigram for the entire age: “The number of ships grows, the endless stream of Vikings never ceases to increase . . . the Vikings conquer everything in their path and nothing resists them.”
- Dan Jones, Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021).

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)

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).

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

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.