Archive for 'Culture'
Allemansrätten Posted by Katja on Oct 24, 2011
Have you ever heard of “Allemansrätten”? Translated to english we would call it something along the lines of “Right of Public Access”. It is almost universally seen as a symbol for Sweden, or maybe at least for most of Europe’s nordic countries. The right to walk freely in the woods, (even private ones) picking berries…
Wordfeud – a new way of practicing Swedish Posted by jennie on Oct 19, 2011
Have you been bitten by the Wordfeud-bug yet? Well, if you haven’t and you have no intention to be bitten by it either, I strongly advice you to stop reading now. Wordfeud is highly addictive and might harm your relationships- unless your family, friends and partner are addicts too, that is. But Wordfeud can also…
Swedes Abroad Mourn… Posted by Marcus Cederström on Oct 18, 2011
It’s been rumored for months now. Hushed whispers in the Swedish-American community. Disgust. Fear. Sadness. It’s been a time of uncertainty. Swedes around the world have been stocking up on the essentials. And by Swedes everywhere I mean my dad. And by essentials I mean Kalles Kaviar. IKEA has decided to discontinue their sale of…
Collective over individual Posted by Katja on Oct 10, 2011
Let us take the case of how we look at progress in school in Sweden as an example of this. The whole gets focused more on than the individual’s progress and level in today’s school system. Instead of dividing up an age group into A, B and C classes for math, English and Swedish for…
I Love You in Swedish Posted by jennie on Oct 5, 2011
Ah those magic words, so lovely to hear and sometimes so hard to say. Well, especially if you don’t know HOW to say them. Therefore, we decided that a blog post about these three little words would be absolutely essential. So here goes: I love you = Jag älskar dig (“dig” is pronounced “dej”)…
Sven Tumba – Swedish Legend Posted by Marcus Cederström on Oct 4, 2011
While this blog focuses on language a lot, we try to introduce everyone to a bit of Swedish culture as well. Sometimes that culture is humorous, like Swedish Stereotypes. Again, other times it looks at pop culture. Sometimes though, that culture can be tinged with a bit of sadness for many Swedes. This is one…
Tips and tricks for Swedes in friendliness Posted by Katja on Oct 3, 2011
Not too long ago I wrote a post on how physical I experienced Swedes being after I came back from Japan. A lot of the responses were that you did not at all feel Swedes were particularly physical and had on the contrary felt that they were rather cold and quite distant. I can understand…