Sweden
Starry starry night: the return of the sleeper train
Slow travel is in vogue and with it the renaissance of the railways. And what better way to journey by night across borders in the company of strangers?
Who killed Salwan Momika, the Iraqi who burned a Quran?
Salwan Momika, the Iraqi man who spearheaded the Quran burning protest in Sweden, was shot dead today. Five men have been…
Murder in the dark: The Eighth House, by Linda Segtnan, reviewed
Motherhood prompts Segtnan to research the cold case of Birgitta Sivander, a nine-year-old found murdered in a Swedish forest in 1948
Why did Swedish conservatives relax gender-change laws?
In the 2010s the main political dynamic inside western societies could be boiled down to simple left and right. Figures…
What we owe to the self-taught genius Carl Linnaeus
Bumptious, uncouth and the despair of his schoolmasters, Linnaeus died almost forgotten. Yet he established a system of taxonomy that we still use two centuries later
The price of populism
Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), dropped the bomb last weekend. In a TV interview, Merz…
Boiling point
What’s behind the rise of gang violence across Europe?
Europe turns right
On her recent visit to Washington, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves presented herself as the perfect candidate to be the next…
The politics of panic
It is 15 months since Sweden’s Coronavirus Commission presented its final report. The 770-page document analysed how the country handled…
Has a Quran-burning protest ended Sweden’s Nato dream?
A crowd gathered outside Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm on Saturday afternoon to watch far-right politician Rasmus Paludan burn the Quran.…
Nato is no longer ‘brain dead’
Finland and Sweden will be formally invited to join Nato today. Them joining the alliance will bolster Nato’s presence in the…
Forewarned is not forearmed
When Ray Bradbury was asked if his dystopian vision in Fahrenheit 451 would become a reality, he replied: ‘I don’t…
Why the new Anglo-Swedish pact matters
Boris Johnson will arrive in Stockholm tomorrow to sign a defence agreement with Sweden to tide the country over until it…
Sweden is burning again
Sweden has seen streets riots before. The country has witnessed attacks on police and rescue workers. But what played out this…
Is this the birth of a Nordic Nato?
In the past six weeks, Finland and Sweden’s security policies have changed more than they have over the past six…
And on it goes
A question looms throughout this book: is it better to die rather than experience the wrath of a publicly shamed…
How gang warfare took over Sweden’s streets
Nils Grönberg was 19 years old when he was shot and killed: one bullet to his chest and one to…
Sweden’s gun crime epidemic is spiralling out of control
The shots were fired at 1pm on a Sunday, in spite of a heavy police presence at the scene. A…
How Denmark helped America spy on Sweden
A large, investigative collaboration between Scandinavian public service outlets and European newspapers such as Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung has…
Royal decree
Is Sweden ready for a woke monarchy?
Sweden, Covid and lockdown – a look at the data
Over the last year, the debate about lockdown has been driven to extremes – everyone has, by now, made up their…
Opportunity knocks
There is a kind of conversation which sounds intelligent, and which makes sense at first hearing, but which deeper thought…
Sweden’s rule of eight marks a change of strategy
Sweden has been pretty much the only country in the world to have responded to coronavirus using a voluntary system: advising,…
Letters
Ask the English Sir: Toby Young rightly criticises the juvenile posturing of the devolved governments of the Union over Covid-19…
Get yourself to Sweden – while you still can
An idea gains ground that we shouldn’t go abroad any more: that the very act of travelling without urgent reason…
