Things in Sweden

[t209]

What do you see when you think Sweden?
For me,
1. Minecraft
2. Ikea
3. Notch
4. A Girl with Dragon Tatoo (heck, even american adaption have Immigrant Song (Viking themed))
5. Anders Loves Maria.

[Zaggab]

1. Home
2. Jantelagen
3. Personal Space
4. Moderate amounts of snow
5. Swedish summer

[Aedilred]

1. Brilliant generalship
2. Nobel prizes
3. Wallander
4. Beowulf
5. Bill Bryson

[DeusMortuusEst]

And the translation is correct.

[H Birchgrove]

1. Dad

2. Home

3. Inventors and (their) inventions

4. Equality

5. Peace

[PersonMan]

I think of my Swedish friends.

And of this one Swedish christmas series that I "interpret" for the lulz.

[Mauve Shirt]

Goofy language that I really want to learn.
Engineering.
Fish.
Cold.
Fish.
The girl with the dragon tattoo.
Fish.

[The Succubus]

1. Asta
2. Birchy
3. Teddy
4. Vikings
5. Beautiful blonde girls

[Teddy]

1. Home
2. Peace and quiet
3. The complex social game that is the cake plate at the fika table, and how it can be generalised to apply to the Swedish society as a whole
4. Being completely obsessed with that Sweden should be the best country
5. Being endlessly surprised everytime Sweden is mentioned anywhere outside of its own borders (I mean, why would anyone ever be interested in a small country at the outskirts of Europe that consists mostly of forests and holds no more than 0,15% of the world population?)

5. Swedish summer

Needs more rain.

3. Teddy

Now this was unexpected.
*points to point 5 in his list*
I mean, I didn't even write in this thread yet (mostly because I was trying to figure out what connection Bill Bryson has with Sweden).

[Perenelle]

1. My Swedish friend/acquaintance
2. Swedish Fish (the candy)
3. Real fish
4. Snow and lakes
5. Chocolate
6. peaceful, tolerant people

I don't know why I thought of lakes. Are there a lot of lakes in Sweden?

[Teddy]

I don't know why I thought of lakes. Are there a lot of lakes in Sweden?

There are indeed. we have ca 100000 lakes that are greater than 2 acres.

[Elder Tsofu]

Sweden? Hm...

1. Gothenburg

2. Värmland

3. Umeå

4. Good roads

5. Home Sweet Home.

[ForzaFiori]

1) long, unpronounceable words
2) tall, blonde people
3) Snow. lots of snow.
3) Reindeer
4) Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking
5) Swedish people

[Aedilred]

I mean, I didn't even write in this thread yet (mostly because I was trying to figure out what connection Bill Bryson has with Sweden).

He wrote an article a long time ago describing a time he was stuck in Stockholm of an evening with absolutely nothing to do, and found himself reading the phone book:

"There were 212 people in Stockholm named Erik Eriksson, 117 named Sven Svensson, 126 named Nils Nilsson and 259 named Lars Larsson... if you go to Stockholm, take drink."

It's been stuck in my head for years. Unfortunately the page I linked to is swamped with quotes from him, and thus not terribly helpful.

[KuReshtin]

1. Family
2. Midsummer
3. Julbord (Christmas smorgasbord)
4. Snow
5. Glassiären Ice Cream parlour, Karlskrona
6. Kalmar
7. Barbecuing hot dogs over open fire on a sharpened stick.
8. Jantelagen
9. 'Lagom'

[Perenelle]

There are indeed. we have ca 100000 lakes that are greater than 2 acres.

Huh, looks like my subconscious knows more about Sweden than I thought it did.

[Traab]

The Swedish Bikini Team. I dont care that they are americans who advertised Milwaukee Best, the first thing I think of when I think Sweden, is this.

[dehro]

muahahah, Traab..so good to see Al Bundy again. I'd forgotten all about the swedish bikini team

1. swedish chef.. because, let's be honest..who cares that he isn't Swedish.. it's hilarious.. and..isn't that how donuts are made anyway?
2. snow and trees.. because that's all I saw of Sweden when I went there for work, once. very pretty.
3. Ikea adverts.
4. Jonkoping.. stayed in a wild west themed resort somewhere nearby there 3 days and never even knew there actually was a fairly large city beyond the snowed-in resort.
5. Swedish girls' amazing talent for holding their liquor.

honorable mention should go to ABBA

[Juggling Goth]

1. Asta Kask

2. The Malmo Crime City Rollers, who I had the privilege to see play last month, and who are some amazing fast, agile, strategic, kickass rollergirls.

[Zaggab]

Needs more rain.

Yes, unfortunately however, every picture I've got of Swedish summer looks like this, or has cute dogs in them

[Elhann]

"There were 212 people in Stockholm named Erik Eriksson, 117 named Sven Svensson, 126 named Nils Nilsson and 259 named Lars Larsson... if you go to Stockholm, take drink."

Considering that "Bjorn" is not an uncommon name in Sweden, and it means "Bear", you'll agree that Swedish naming is great (FWIW, one of my professors when I lived in Sweden was called Hans Hansson :P)

Other things I associate with Sweden:
Crazy language (Sorry, but "nurse" shouldn't be absolutely impossible to pronounce, without needing one). It may explain why even old grannies speak some English and are able to help a foreigner with his shopping, though.
Köttbullar.
Surprisingly friendly people. See "old grannies speaking English and helping you with your grocery shopping" above. My experience says that some tall blond girls cannot hold their alcohol as one may wish.
Stupidly short days in winter (what do you mean, 15:00 and its pitch black) and absurdly long days in summer (Dear Sun: it's 23:00, have the decency to set)
Bycicles!
Snow.
Reindeers and forests.
Free libraries that have books in other languages.
Systembolaget... :P

Sweden is great.

[Teddy]

Considering that "Bjorn" is not an uncommon name in Sweden, and it means "Bear", you'll agree that Swedish naming is great

It's Björn, not Bjorn (yes, I know it's a hassle for most of you to write the 'ö' character, but I like to point this out), and it's pronounciated pretty much like "burn" with a sound that's quite close to the 'y' in "you" between the 'b' and the 'u'.

PS: Guess my name.

Crazy language (Sorry, but "nurse" shouldn't be absolutely impossible to pronounce, without needing one). It may explain why even old grannies speak some English and are able to help a foreigner with his shopping, though.

I don't actually think that's the reason. We were just quite quick o realise that English was becoming a world language.

[Elhann]

PS: Guess my name.

I'm gonna go with Sven. :P
(And you're right, it's Björn, not Bjorn. It's not that it is a hassle to write those '¨', it is more than it's been about five years since I wrote any Swedish, and I didn't remember properly. You'll notice that I wrote köttbullar right (I hope) Sorry)

[Amiel]

Unpronounceable Swedish words
Beautiful Swedish women

[BaronOfHell]

Yellow and blue, like when you've been beaten up.
Safety.
Tough weather.
Wow I just realised, there doesn't seem to be any sports activity I am familiar with which Sweden are champions of? I guess that's actually a plus too.
Strong, beautiful and intelligent people.
Leader of the north.

[Traab]

Two questions, First, Does Sweden really have an unnaturally high concentration of tall, beautiful, blond haired vixens? Also, who was the nobel prize winning PR mastermind that managed to get sweden remembered as the home of the beautiful ladies? Because thats way better than the reps some other places have.

[t209]

PS: Guess my name.

Ulfric (I know it's from skyrim but it sounds bear-ish name (Ulf= Bear))
Ulfserk
Ulf

[Elder Tsofu]

Two questions, First, Does Sweden really have an unnaturally high concentration of tall, beautiful, blond haired vixens? Also, who was the nobel prize winning PR mastermind that managed to get sweden remembered as the home of the beautiful ladies? Because thats way better than the reps some other places have.

According to wikipedia we do. At last regarding the blonde hair and being tall. (M: 1,82m, F: 1,67m - place 4 and 10 resp. on wikipedias probably very incomplete list)

Ulfric (I know it's from skyrim but it sounds bear-ish name (Ulf= Bear))
Ulfserk
Ulf

I'd link Ulf (actual name) to Ulv, which is an old way of saying wolf in Sweden.
Ulfrik is also an actual name which I've never come accross while ulfserk would be a wolf-hide of some sort (I suppose).

[BaronOfHell]

Two questions, First, Does Sweden really have an unnaturally high concentration of tall, beautiful, blond haired vixens?

It depends on how you compare. Compared to rest of the world, I think the average nord is about 10 cm. higher, but with a much higher fluctuation as well.
However it's the tall people which gets noticed anyway, so the higher fluctuations from average height merely makes it seem like nords are even taller.
On the other hand, there's also huge fluctuations in average height from area to area, as far as I know.
In other words, you can't actually know for sure what to expect when you settle unless you go for the larger cities, where you'll hit the whole scale.

The proportion of blonde haried to dark haired people is certainly higher in the north than in the rest of the world. If they're more beautiful is a matter of subjective opinion. I for one have never been very attracted on a purely physical basis to the model look. However since the model look is designed to be unachieveable by e.g. being higher than average and this height is within the average in the north, it means a lot more girls up there is likely to qualify for a model look. Given the higher safety and the big focus on both physical and mental health, plus being a leading country in the world, many womans most likely have both environmental and genetical advantages when they're from this area. Again with high fluctuations of course. I'm not certain what "vixens" mean though.

[Teddy]

Ulfric (I know it's from skyrim but it sounds bear-ish name (Ulf= Bear))
Ulfserk
Ulf

As Tsofu pointed out, Ulf means Wolf. It's pretty close however, because that's the name of one of my smaller brothers (we all have traditional viking names).