Welcome to

Oh so swedish

Capturing the Swedish mindset

Christmas cartoon

kalleanka
4

15:00 the 24th of december is holy in sweden. In Sweden Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve, with friends, family, a special holiday smorgasbord and heaps of gifts and sweets, not very different from how Christmas is celebrated in other cultures, Swedes have a very odd and peculiar tradition. At 15:00, or 3 pm, on […]

Read More

Sauce country

gravy-01
7

Swedes just love to drench everything in sauce. For many Swedes a dish is only complete if it contains sauce. The traditional brunsås, gravy, is one of the favorite sauce and it is served to several dishes such as köttbullar, Swedish meatballs.

Read More

50 shades of grey

wardrobe
4

Swedish minimalism extends to fashion. The predominant color scale in a Swede´s wardrobe ranges usually from black to grey. Some Swedish might regard themselves dressed colorful when they were navy or white. Swedes are highly fashion and trend-conscious but they nevertheless have a very practical approach to clothes. It seems that Swedes dress up, but […]

Read More

Tie a bag

plasticbag_tie
6

Tired of all those plastic grocery bags stuffed under your sink that threaten to spill out all over the place? Do it the Swedish way! It seems that every Swede ties all plastic bags before storing them. Tying your plastic bags saves you storing place and helps you to keep everything in order (maintaining ordning och reda). One reason to the upcoming […]

Read More

Good Cop

Polis1
6

The Swedish law enforcement has a bit of a ”softer” approach to upholding justice than in some other countries, here demonstrated by this security guard with his ”cuffs of love” at Gothenburg Pride. As a result of this, Sweden has one of the highest trust rates regarding law enforcement in the world. Don’t you just want a […]

Read More

Tack

tack
4

Swedish people are saying thanks, tack, probably more than people in other countries. The reasons for this are partly linguistic, as the Swedish tack is different from e.g. English thanks. It encompasses both the meaning of ‘thanks’, and that of ‘please’. More interestingly, there are cultural reasons for this. For Swedes, there are some higher-order […]

Read More

The Guitar Guy

guitarguy
4

Another strong Swedish tradition is the summer campfire musician aka the Guitar Guy. If you are having a barbeque, picnic or other outdoors get together chances are that the Guitar Guy is going to be there waiting with his guitar for the sun to set. Then he will take out his guitar and start strumming […]

Read More

Take off your shoes

shoes
6

You really know that you are in Sweden when people take off their shoes when they step into others home. If you take off your shoes you show respect. So if you want to offend someone, you should definitely have your shoes on when you enter someone’s house.

Read More

Snow Chaos

Namnlöst 3
4

When the first snow arrives to Sweden people always get surprised which leads to chaos. Public transport stops working or get canceled because of the weather. Often you can’t even take your own car because there is also chaos on the roads. So prepare for total chaos especially in the big cities when the first […]

Read More

Work Life Balance

work-01
5

In Sweden you need to be aware of that people make a clear distinction between work and private life. Swedes and the Swedish society place a lot of emphasis on maintaining healthy work-live balances, thus improving overall quality of life. Swedes work to live, they don´t live to work. Many Swedes are done with their […]

Read More

>> <<