This National Day sounds like a time of rejoicing, a day on which Swedes celebrate with age-old traditional rituals, probably involving raw fish and copious amounts of akvavit?

No, not really. 'Den sjätte juni' is hardly a date that trips off a Swedish tongue in the way that Quatorze Juillet does in French. Born on the Sixth of June will never have quite the same patriotic ring as Born on the Fourth of July.

In fact, Swedes didn't even get a day off for it until 2005. For most people, it's just a welcome day off in the early summer. Oh, unless it falls on a Saturday or Sunday.

But what exactly is it supposed to celebrate?

A more difficult question to answer than you might expect. Unlike other countries, which have anniversaries of independence or revolutions to commemorate, Sweden has never been occupied and has never got rid of its monarchy.

If you ask a Swede, they'll probably mumble something vague about Gustav Vasa.

The day does indeed coincide with the anniversary of Gustav Vasa's election as Sweden's king in 1523, marking the end of the union with Denmark and the start of a new period of closer unity within Sweden. This day was celebrated from the 19th century as a national day of commemoration.

June 6th was also the day in 1809 on which Sweden adopted a new constitution, something it did again on the same date in 1974. From the 1890s, the Skansen open air museum in Stockholm started organizing patriotic celebrations on June 6th. In 1916, the day became The Swedish Flag Day.

Who decided to make it into Sweden's National Day?

National Day was first recognized officially by the government in 1983, but it only became a public holiday in 2005, after years of debate. The official hope was that it would be a day of unity for the Swedish people. Others saw it as a sop to industry, who would now be able to squeeze more working days out of the masses in the name of patriotism.

I want to join in the celebrations - how should I do this in a typically Swedish way?

As Sweden's only really had two National Day holidays so far, there isn't much of a precedent. Dancing round Maypoles and eating raw fish is really reserved for Midsummer, later this month. Until it became a public holiday, the only visible signs of National Day were the flags flying in people's gardens and from buses and trams.

These days, the royals celebrate the day by taking a carriage procession from the Royal Palace in Stockholm to Skansen. The Swedish flag is raised and bouquets are given to the Queen and princesses.
Don't like the sound of that - what should I do instead?
Do what an SVT survey found that 81 percent of Swedes do - nothing at all. You, like them, can use the day to assemble Ikea furniture, lounge about in the sun or catch up on much-needed sleep. Let the celebrations begin!

Back Home (Sønderborg)

I have returned home after a week long jaunt with Sister Swede.

Malmö is simply amazing, but who am I to try and sell it? (oh yeah, I'm Swede In America!)

Ahhhh... now this is the life!


If I can't afford the Twisting Torso, these sweet Swedish designed flats will have to do...


Sunset in Malmo...

Link to the rest of Malmo.

Firsts and Seconds:To the homeland...

Guest Blogger: Sister Swede Reports

We are moments away from leaving Sonderborg for one more night in Copenhagen, then it's off to Sweden! Here are some photos I took while in Ben's "home" town.

Highlights of Sonderborg: Swimming in the Baltic, downtown, and Ben got another haircut!

Copenhagen contest called off

When I said the Scandinavian truce was to take a pause, the Danes just had to go and take it too far. Sweden took a 3-0 lead in the first 25 minutes, only to see their lead slowly chipped away by the Danes. In the 89th minute, Poulsen of Denmark took a cheap shot at Rosenberg, reminiscent of the Zindane head butt of the 2006 World Cup. The Dane received a direct red card for the kidney punch and the Swedes were awarded a penalty kick. After the call, all hell broke loose in Parken (the stadium in Copenhagen), and a disgruntled Dane charged the field on a mission and attempted to attack the referee. The ref called the match off, and the pitch was cleared as fans pelted the field with flares/debris. After deliberation, UEFA took away the goals of Denmark, and the final score will go in the books as 3-0 Sweden.

Needless to say, I can't wait to go to Copenhagen tomorrow to see what kind of destruction the Danes unleash in their drunken fury!

The Hand Holding is Over

Scandinavian cooperation takes a pause today, as Sverige takes on Danmark tonight in qualifying for the 2008 Euro Cup. Tickets are going for 500 Euro ($675 USD), so I'm going to sit this one out to join my Dansk rivals here in Sonderborg for a night of drinking and watching good 'ole fashioned Scandinavian football. I'm predicting a 2-1 Sverige victory.

This was the scene at the 2004 UEFA Euro Cup when Swedes and Danes swapped jerseys after a 2-2 draw ensured they both would move on... to the demise of Italy, who needed anything but a draw... there's nothing like Scandinavians working together!

Dream Job

All jokes aside, it would be sweet to work for IKEA corporate one day. Not only would you have preferred access to efficient Swedish design, but there would obviously be some travel time to the homeland.

IKEA has made the short list upon graduation...

http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/jobs/apply_now/international_jobs/index.html

Whats White and Red and Red All Over?

Distance from Equator: 3,500 miles
Time in the sun: 2 hours
Being Swedish: Priceless (and a mean burn!)

Swedes (not) in America

From June 2 - 10, there will be one less Swede in America. None other than The Swede in America's Sister will be joining her Swedish brother for a week of Scandinavian adventure. The trip will inevitably include a second (first for some) pilgrimage to Sweden.

Ben's Swedes
(left to right: Sister Swede (Rachel), Swede in America (Ben), Mother Swede (Vicki), not picutured: O'Father (irish)

Human Popsicles

Sweden is considering allowing freeze-drying as a new method to bury the dead instead of traditional burials and cremations:

The freeze-drying method offers an environmentally friendly burial transforming corpses into organic compost. Traditional burials and cremations hurt the environment by polluting air and water, as a corpse buried in a coffin will take many years to decompose completely.

Under the new method, the corpse is taken to a temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius in a liquid nitrogen bath and the body is broken down into a rough powder through mechanical vibrations.

The remains are then dehydrated and cleared of any metal, reducing a body weighing 75 kilograms (165 pounds) in life to 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of pink-beige powder, plus the remains of the coffin.

The key point here... the company has applied for patents in 35 countries.

Sweden's Response to Football Brawls

In response to Kristin's experiences with football in Chile, I bring this article from Sweden. We take our football seriously here:

Mass brawl at Swedish girls' football match

A row between a parent and a referee at a girls' football match escalated into a brawl on Sunday.

The match, between two teams of 14-year-old girls, was being played at Möllevallen in Skurup. An exchange of words between the father of one of the players and the referee ended with the ref whacking a ball at the spectator.

"That's one version. The referee's version is that the parent threatened him with a corner flag," said Stellan Andersson.

The father went and got into his car while the referee called for reinforcements. Shortly afterwards, several cars full of people - including the referee's father - arrived.

Accoring to unconfirmed witness reports, they are said to have circled the father's car and tried to smash in the windows.

The father managed to drive away from the scene but two cars set off in pursuit.

"We went down there with four units. The atmosphere was very threatening at first. Nobody has been arrested but the matter has been reported.

Denmark's Eurovision Dreams

Denmark's dream of winning Eurovision 2007 died this evening as they failed to make it through the qualifying round. The attached video of the performance gives key insight as to why they didn't qualify:



PS: Sweden's "The Ark" is prequalified for the final to take place Saturday.

ATRs: Which Swedish Princess Should I Marry?

Crown Princess Victoria

Princess Madeleine

So the Swedish Royal Family is in Copenhagen for a few days, and this brings up a question that has gone unanswered for far too long... which member of the Swedish Royal Family should I marry?

On the one hand, Princess Victoria is the Heir to the Swedish Kingdom... On the other hand, Princess Madeleine is The Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland. Do I want an entire kingdom, or just a couple provinces to look after? Either one would mother beautiful Swedish babies, so that's a moot point... Both are collegiately educated: Princess Victoria is a Yale girl, whilst Princess Madeleine a U of Stockholm girl...

I've been loosing sleep over this... I could really use some feedback from the readers.

Introducing... Sweden's Modern Swedish Chef

Sweden's answer to Martha Stewart, Tina Nordström mixes pseudo-southern charm with a cheeky sense of humour.

Who is she and why is she famous?

Tina Nordström is Sweden's most famous celebrity chef. The likable southerner's untrammeled popularity make her something of a Swedish Delia Smith (without the major shareholding in a mid-sized football club), or Martha Stewart (without the spell in jail).



What's her secret?

Like mama's lasagna, it's all in the recipe. Take a spoonful of southern charm, mixed with a dash of barely decipherable dialect. Add a sprig of humour and bring the bubbly personality to the boil. Stick the whole lot in the mixer and you're left with a quite delectable dish.

Sounds tasty alright.



It's a quite exquisite concoction, which has ensured that the woman they call Food-Tina has topped the ratings any time she's been bothered to put her hand near a pot.

And what about family? Has she ever had a bun in the oven?

Hilarious gag. She's only heard it more times than she's had hot dinners. But yes, she and her boyfriend Martin have a little one-year-old called Albin.



That was a bit saucy. So is she still keeping the juices flowing on Swedish television?

No. Food-Tina has recently been treating American audiences to her culinary delights on a show called New Scandinavian Cooking. Not surprisingly, she has proved a BIG hit with US viewers despite being unable to use her trademark phrase: 'jättegott'.

What does that mean?

It means eminently palatable.

Another Swede Returns Home...

On Saturday, April 28, another Swede returned home... My grandpa, John Hallberg, passed away in his sleep after enjoying his last cookie time.

Swedish Bikini Team

Introducing... up close and personal: the Swedish Bikini Team

Who are they and why are they famous?

The Swedish Bikini Team stepped out of the sea and into the limelight in 1991. Once accurately described as 'vixens of beerdom', the swimwear Swedes quickly skedaddled off the scene and were last spotted dancing to rock music in a cottage in Lapland just a few months after their breakthrough.

There are about fifty possible follow-up questions but let's start with this one: What the heck are you babbling on about?

Right. Well phrased, sir. Let's put it this way: the Swedish Bikini Team's exit from the world stage was facilitated by the fact that it had never really existed in the first place.

Well, that makes it clear as sausage water, as they say in these parts.

Bear with me a moment. The thing is, Sweden does not have, nor has it ever had, a bikini team. Now that's not to say that there is no such thing as a bikini team. The USA, for example, has plenty of them. There's the west coast Kwicherbichen team (say it aloud, you may find it amusing). Then there's the Cajun Spice team from Louisiana, as well as a couple of combos in Florida. But all of these bearers of beachwear have ready access to a commodity that Sweden sadly lacks.

So who were these Scandinavian lovelies then?

Firstly, it is interesting to note that not a single flailing Nordic limb was to be found among the Swedish Bikini Team's ranks. The girls, all of them American, were hired to help market Old Milwaukee beer. Platinum blonde Swedish strand maidens were considered a perfect complement to the brewer's slogan: 'It doesn't get any better than this'.

What doesn't?

Life. Life, that is, for a group of young men spending time together in the great outdoors. In the ads, the underdressed pseudo-Swedes would always arrive on the scene, perhaps by parachute, just in time to counteract the onset of tedium.

And then they'd sit all down for coffee and a bun and discuss the pros and cons of turbo-charged Keynesianism?

What? No, they'd all dance, drink beer and perhaps entertain the notion of entering into transatlantic trysts. For the young men at whom the campaign was aimed, it just didn't get any better than that.

But imagine if they could have had all of the above as well as a unionized job, generous children's allowance and a secure state pension. Surely it doesn't get any better than that?

Stop it, you're being difficult. This campaign had nothing to do with the differing worldviews of wealthy nations. It was about fun, sex and beer, all done in a manner intended to parody more po-faced beer commercials in which cameras lingered shamelessly on the female form without the slightest sense of fun.

And how was the campaign received?

It was incredibly popular to start with. The Swedish Bikini Team became so well-known that they appeared in a couple of episodes of Married... With Children before accepting Playboy's invitation to shed their famed blue and yellow bikinis.

Cripes. They'd come a long way from the mind of an advertising guru. What made them go from major league and widely loved to itsy bitsy and teenie weenie?

Following complaints from some female employees, a lawyer took exception to the brewer's bevy of bikini girls and accused the makers of Old Milwaukee of creating a working climate that was conducive to sexual harassment. In the words of Patrick Scullin, one of the campaign's creators, the Swedish Bikini Team came to represent "the politically incorrect evil that lurks in our loins".

Let me guess the next bit: Old Milwaukee backed slowly out of the room, whistled a happy tune and pretended never to have rubbed the lamp that first unleashed the beast.

Something like that, yes. Coming as it did at a time of some high profile sexual harassment lawsuits, the allegations caused the manufacturer to lose its bottle. As broadcasters and beer-makers began distancing themselves from the flashing of flesh, the surrogate Swedes didn't stand a polka dot's chance in hell of starring in a new campaign.

So what became of them?

A final ad spot for Old Milwaukee featured the usual flannel-trousered youths frying fish and proclaiming that it didn't get any better than this. Except this time it really didn't. The buxom blondes were not in Kansas any more. Instead they had returned to their faraway land, never to set foot on American shores again.

And nobody ever found the bikinis in the vaults of history and tried them on for size?

Now that you mention it, a replica team emerged some years back to carry on the noble legacy. The new Swedish Bikini Team even took the innovative step of involving actual Swedish women. The revitalized vamps went on to star in the Bond-meets-Charlie's-Angels feature film Never Say Never Mind.

It doesn't get better than that.
No, it doesn't.

BKASC: Bo Socken

Today's Better Know a Scandinavian City: Bo Socken

"Johan August Persson and Johanna Sofia Olsdotter were married about 1854. Johan was born on April 3, 1833 at a farm called Murtorpet located in Bo socken, a parish in the province of Närke.

Murtorpet

Following their marriage, Johan and Johanna lived at this same farm. The occupation of Johan was listed in the church records as crofter, a man who rented his cottage and paid for it by working for the owner of the land a fixed number of days. Johan and Johanna had seven children, but two died at very young ages. Their eldest son, Carl August, was six years old and his brother, Gustaf Adolf, was three when their sister Emeli was born in 1861. Two years later, Emeli died just four months after her sister Anna was born. Anna also died before reaching her second birthday. A son, Johan Axel, was born following the death of Anna. Their only surviving daughter, Frida Kristina, was born in 1868. In 1871, their youngest son, Malcolm Hugo, was born.

Modern Murtorpt

During the last half of the nineteenth century, many different factors were causing people in Sweden to emigrate to the United States. Among these were religious persecution, deteriorating economic conditions, drought and dwindling land availability. In 1880, Carl August, the oldest son, decided to emigrate to the United States. Although emigration was occurring all around them, Johan and Johanna must have had considerable heartache with the departure of a son to a foreign country, knowing that he probably would never return to Sweden and the farm called Murtorpet." (murtorpet.se)

Carl August was my Great-great grandfather. He was the first among his family to emigrate to America. In the spirit of my great-great grandfather's tenacity, I made my voyage back "home."

Me, back on the farm

Sweden withdraws from Miss Universe contest

Sweden will not send a candidate to the Miss Universe contest in Mexico, it has been announced. Organizers of Miss Sweden say the international competition is too old fashioned.

"The modernization of the international competition has been significantly slower than the Swedish contest, although we see signs of change on horizon. Until the parent organization catches up we have chosen not to participate this year," organizer Panos Papadopoulos said in a statement on Wednesday.

On a related note, Swedish model Anika Knudsen has a tattoo of a lingonberry on her right buttocks (not old fashioned).

BKASC: Malmö

Today's Better Know a Scandinavian City: Malmö

Malmö was originally settled as a Danish city in 1275, and was for many centuries Denmark's second largest city (after Kobenhavn). It remained a Danish city until the 17th century, when Sweden royally raped and pillaged what was left of Denmark, and took 1/2 of Denmark's territory. Because of this intense war history, Malmö served as a key military port throughout the Scandinavian wars.

King Karl X Gustav of Sweden, who took the city from Danish dominion

Wars aside, Malmö is now Sweden's third most populous city, and is located on the southernmost region of Sweden. Its close ties with Denmark have remained, and in 1999, a bridge was built connecting Copenhagen to Malmö. Many residents of Malmö choose to live in Malmö and commute 20 minutes by train to work in Copenhagen (given the opportunity, who wouldn't want to live in Sweden?)

The bridge-tunnel Oresund, the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe.

Upon first arrival, it is not easy to distinguish Sweden from Denmark, but the subtle differences are what make Sweden the best country on Earth (citation needed).

Jon, seconds after entering Sweden: "I wonder how long it will be until we see our first IKEA?"
Ben: "There's one!" (pointing to an IKEA)

After soaking up a lifetime of Swedish identity, I walked into a local church, and high school choir of Swedish girls were singing a hymn of Heaven on earth (I can only assume). Not a bad way to spend my first moments in the homeland.

Blonde haired women grow on trees and Swedish meatballs rain from the sky in this land of milk and sweet lingonberry honey.

Malmö is home to Scandinavia's tallest building, the Turning Torso. Don't be too surprised if I come home with a 6,000 kroner mortgage for a flat in this beauty.

The design gives the building the appearance of a vine twisting its way up a pole toward the sun.

Great Scandinavian city, or greatest Scandinavian city? ...it's too early for me to judge.

One need not sightsee or worry about visiting all the important landmarks while in Malmö, just sit back and take in the beauty.

Check-in from Oslo...

Easter is upon us! Happy Easter to all readers, and look forward to some wonderful Easter pics from Norway, Sweden, ect... Here are some appitizers from Germany, Denmark, and Sweden...

Click on the thumbnails on the right to view the cities...

I'm going "home..."

This is Murtorpet. My Great-Great Grandfather, Carl August Johansson was born and raised on this farm. At the Age of 24, he packed up his things and Emigrated with his family to America in 1890.

Tomorrow I begin my pilgrimage back to my homeland. This is probably the most exciting trip of my life... I hope I will be able to see the farm, and meet some of my relatives that did not emigrate to America.

Updates over the next two weeks may be sparatic, but look forward to some awesome pictures and a general GREAT time!