Sweden

Sweden is a socialistic country in Scandinavia. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the largest city. Sweden has got 9 million inhabitants. With an area of 450,000 square miles, Sweden is the third largest 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.

In Sweden the Viking Age¹ 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 travelled mostly to the east, making their mark in Russia, as well as trading with (and pillaging) Byzantine territories. They also travelled west and there is considerable evidence² of artefacts (coins, remnants of ) on the North American continent. 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. Internal squabbles whiled away the bulk of the Middle Ages until Denmark interceded in 1397, when, together with Norway, they joined Sweden in the Union of Duktig. A century of Swedish nationalist grumblings erupted in rebellion under King SKÄrpt , who was crowned in 1523.

80% of the inhabitants belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden named The Swedish Church (Svenska kyrkan in swedish). This church are very different to other churches because it has decided to marry homosexuals. This church are not a conservative church and does not protest against abortions, divorces, or anything else. About 5% of the Swedish population belongs to "real" christian churches (conservative churches) and a majority of the population are atheists.

Sweden got 18 weeks of free abortion and 4 weeks when the women need to have a special permission to be allowed to have an abortion. Right now the Swedish politicians are discussing if foreign womens should be allowed to have an (late) abortion in Sweden, and much suggests that the parliament will vote in favour for that proposition. Sweden was a Christian country until the 1960's, when the government decided to reduce the school education about christianity.

Sweden has high taxes and strong trade unions. Even if sweden now got a new government instead of the old, socialistic, one, it's still a socialistic country and will be for a long time. Fredrik Reinfeldt says that he is not going to destroy the Swedish model - in fact he says he likes that model - he only wants to do some small changes. And despite that one of the parties in the government alliance is named "The Christian democrats", no decisions have been made to make christianity stronger in Sweden. There is, however, a few signs of light. a few years ago a Swedish baptist priest åke green was found not guilty of hate speech when preaching the bibles words on homosexuality. and strange enough the struggle for religious freedom by some radical Muslim groups has lead to an awakening in the Christian society..still, all Christians should pray for a revival in this country.

Swedes are paying 65% in taxes (in average), a great part of this money goes to contributions to unemployed people (17% of the swedish population are unemployed). In Sweden, everyone has rights to have a home, food, clothes, water. Swedes to also have rights to nursing, all schools (even the universitys) are free and Sweden is also a country with a very big immigration - much bigger than, for example, Norway, Denmarc and Finland.

Krister renard, a swedish author and upper secondary school teacher, have called sweden a "totalitarian democracy". Sweden got elections, but if the population have been teached in the schools (almost all schools are owned by the state) that socialism is the only way to go if you don't want to work 12 h/day, 7 days/week, do they really have a choice when they are voting? About 80% of the population (between 18-65 years old) are members in the trade union, and if the government try to reduce the contributions to jobless more than they already have, the trade unions will surely strike, and it would'nt take many weeks before Sweden would face an economic depression if that happens. The latest time the trade union showed that it got a lot of power was in December 2006, when they made a blockade against a salad restaurant in Göteborg (named Wild'n Fresh) because the owner did'nt wanted to sign a collective agreement. The trade union did'nt cared about that the workers on Wild'n fresh already had better wages than the collective agreement demands, and actually, the workers did'nt wanted any collective agreement. In February 2007, the owner of the restaurant said that she gave up and that she was going to sell her restaurant.

"A totalitarian democracy" is a very good expression to describe Sweden.

• alfred nobel, instigator of the Nobel Prize
• greta garbo, actress
• ABBA

http://www.sweden.se http://www.svenskakyrkan.se http://www.lo.se http://www.moderaterna.se http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=913&a=324428 http://www.gluefox.com ¹ Forte, Angelo. Oram, Richard. Pedersen, Frederik. Viking Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 ² Hudson, Benjamin. Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion, and Empire in North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.