Sweden

Sweden is a small country in Scandinavia. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the largest city. Sweden has approximately 9 million inhabitants. With an area of 173,750 square miles (450,000 square kilometers), Sweden is a big country in Western Europe.

Sweden is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. The prime minister of Sweden is 41 year old Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of the Moderates. The Swedish parliament has 349 seats. Carl XVI is the current king.

Swedish Viking History

In Sweden the Viking Age was getting under way by the 9th century, and vast repositories of Roman, Byzantine and Arab coins attest to the wealth and power Swedish Vikings accumulated over the next century. Vikings traveled mostly to the east, making their mark in Russia, as well as trading with (and pillaging) Byzantine territories. They also traveled west and there is considerable evidence of artifacts (such as coins) on the North American continent. Vikings pillaged villages all over Ireland, and are the antecedents of many living Irish men and women, such as the former Taoiseach of Ireland, Charles Haughey and his cousin Sile de Valera, pop stars Bob Geldof and Phil Lynott, and artist Charlie Whisker. Remnants of a small settlement (called Ektorp) exist on Newfoundland which include the remains of small dwellings, deteriorated furniture and cooking utensils.

Christianity only took root in the 11th century.

Christianity in Sweden

80% of the inhabitants belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden named The Swedish Church (Svenska kyrkan in Swedish). This church is very different to other churches because it has decided to marry homosexuals. This Church is considered a liberal Church and does not protest against abortions, divorce, and other conservative issues. About 5% of the Swedish population belong to "family-values" Christian churches. Many Swedes are atheists.

Sweden has 18 weeks of free abortion and 4 weeks during which women need to get special permission to be allowed an abortion. Swedish politicians are currently discussing whether foreign women should be allowed to have an late term abortion in Sweden, and much suggests that the parliament will vote in favor of that proposition. In the 1960's the government decided to reduce in school education about Christianity. In 2000, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the government were separated. Before that, all children were born members of the church, except those whose parents took an active decision against it and both left the church. Even if a child were not christened, he or she became a member for life, having to pay a small tax to the church.

In 2005 a Swedish Baptist priest Åke Green was charged with, and found guilty of hate speech, when preaching Biblical teachings regarding homosexuality. He was imprisoned for one month and then acquitted.

Politics

Sweden has high taxes and strong trade unions. Even if Sweden has now got a new government instead of the old one, socialistic one, it's still a country where socialism is strong. Fredrik Reinfeldt says that he is not going to destroy the Swedish model - in fact he says he likes that model - he only wants make some small changes. Although one of the parties in the government alliance is named "The Christian Democrats", no decisions have been made to make Christianity stronger in Sweden.

Swedes are paying 65% of their wage, in taxes, if we count ALL taxes (not only the income tax), the jobless rate is, according to the new government, 17%. The new government are counting everyone that is out of job (except of they who are over 65 years old, under 18 years old, handicapped or ill), the former government lost the election because of many reasons, but the strongest one was that they had cheated with the jobless rate and maked it look lower than it actually was. A lot of the money that comes from taxes goes to the unemployed. Everyone in Sweden got right to have a home, food, water and clothes. Even if the reason is good (to save people from a life on the streets), this costs a lot of money.

Is Sweden a democracy?

Krister Renard, a Swedish author, schoolteacher and member in the Swedish organization "Word of Life", describes Sweden as a "totalitarian democracy". Sweden has fair elections, but all childs are teached in school that socialism (less or more) is the only way to go if you don't want people to die, hungry, on the streets. The history of christianity are teached in school, but their is not much said about today's churches, and the teachers are often very negative to christianity and teaches a wrong picture of it. Especially, they are negative to conservative christianity which is described by the teachers as "something that a majority of the swedish christians fortunately do not support" (that's a quote from a swedish teacher in Society Science). Approximately 80% of the population between the ages of 18 and 65 are members in a trade union. If the government were to try to reduce unemployment and other welfare benefits, trade unions would surely strike perhaps triggering an economic meltdown far beyond that of an ordinary recession.

A totalitarian democracy is a very good sentence to describe Sweden.

Some Notable Swedes

• Alfred Nobel, instigator of the Nobel Prize
• Greta Garbo, actress
• ABBA
• Roxette
• Dag Hammarskjöld
• Anders Celsius
• Astrid Lindgren
• Carl von Linné
• Fredrik Ljungberg
• Henrik Larsson
• Stellan Skarsgård
• Saint Bridgid
• Lars Magnus Ericsson
• Gustavus Adolphus (king, founder of Gothenburg etc, died 1632 in the Thirty Years War)
• Björn Borg, tennis player
• Olof Palme
• Ingemar Bergman

References

• SWEDEN.SE
• Svenska Kyrkan
• http://www.lo.se
• http://www.moderaterna.se
• http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=913&a=324428
• http://www.gluefox.com
• History of Sweden
• Forte, Angelo. Oram, Richard. Pedersen, Frederik. Viking Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005
• Hudson, Benjamin. Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion, and Empire in North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• http://www.livetsord.se/default.aspx?idStructure=918
• http://perkornhall.se/LivetsOrd/index-eng.htm
• http://www.skattebetalarna.se
• The author to this texts own experiences