{"id":334,"date":"2010-01-09T12:05:54","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T16:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=334"},"modified":"2010-01-09T12:05:54","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T16:05:54","slug":"sweden-in-a-nutshell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/sweden-in-a-nutshell\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweden in a nutshell"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a>Remember the Swedish places that are inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage <\/a>list? I know, “world heritage” might not sound like the most exciting thing, but believe me,\u00a0this list is about to get smoking!\u00a0I just listened to an interesting radio program about UNESCO’s new plan to expand the list and\u00a0also\u00a0include traditions, events and\u00a0intangible (immateriella<\/strong>) things as world heritage. It turns out that many African and Aisan countries are unhappy with the list, since Europe pretty much dominates it, because of its long and well preserved history.\u00a0So, this year, all the 117 countries\u00a0that have agreed to the UNESCO-convention will give suggestions on what traditions, rituals, events, languages, phenomenons or recipes\u00a0that they think should be added to the list.\u00a0Uruguyan tango has already made it, China wants to preserve its dragon-boat festival, Mongolian throat singing and Chinese calligraphy. Italy wants to add Sicilian puppet theatre, Hungary their\u00a0six days end of the winter-festival and Norway have just launched a webpage where the Norweigans can give their suggestions (f\u00f6rslag<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

The Swedes? Well, it’s up to the Cultural Department to pick someone that can come up with suggestions. But already, there’s rumors. Straight from the grapevine, here are some suggestions of Swedish intangible things that could be added to the UNESCO World Heritage list:<\/p>\n

Alls\u00e5ng (Sing-a-long)<\/strong>
\nSwedes love to sing, especially if\u00a0there are\u00a0thousands of us doing it at the same time. In summer, almost every town has their own\u00a0sing-a-long event\u00a0which\u00a0basically include a stage, a sing-a-long leader,\u00a0some celebrity guests,\u00a0some traditional Swedish songs\u00a0and a singing audience.\u00a0The master of all sing-a-longs is the TV-program “Alls\u00e5ng p\u00e5 Skansen” (Sing-a-long from Skansen<\/strong>) which has been shown on telly since 1979 but has been going as an event since 1935. Today, this is an incredibly popular tv-show. The celebrities are fighting for\u00a0an invite and people are sleeping outside the gates to get a front row seat.<\/p>\n