Non Swedish people of Reddit, what do you know about Sweden?

This is what I could come up with off the top of my head, without looking anything up...

  • Sweden's capital is Stockholm.

  • It is a long country oriented north-south that occupies the western side of the Scandinavian peninsula, bordering mostly Norway and a bit of Finland.

  • The Swedish flag features a left-of-center cross, yellow on a field of blue.

  • Politics are also left-of-center. I think it's a social democracy with a king as its head of state. His name is probably Gustav but it may be Olaf. It has an effective criminal justice system that focuses on rehabilitation.

  • Its currency is the Swedish kronur (spelling?). SKK? [Thank you, Carmen Sandiego.]

  • You primarily speak Swedish. It's similar to the languages spoken in your neighboring countries and they may be mutually-comprehensible but they somehow aren't considered dialects of the same language. The writing has a lot of crossed-out 0s and "regular" letters with circles above them.

  • It hosted a Winter Olympics once (perhaps that's where Lillehammer is located). Regardless, its athletes excel at all winter sports, especially the Nordic ones (obviously). Several Swedes play in the NHL but I can't think of their names at the moment. They also produced a good tennis player a few years back named Jonas Bjorkman.

  • It is home to a homogenous population of invariably tall, fit, blue-eyed, sexually liberated people of both sexes.

  • Vikings.

  • The original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is Swedish.

  • (Forget the Lillehammer thing. The more I think of it, the more Norwegian it sounds.)

  • It has a well-developed rail system that even connects with Denmark over a cool-looking bridge. A temporarily-popular state-owned TV station showed a train traveling the country for several days straight. The same channel did something similar with a ferry crossing too.

  • You all drink copious amounts of vodka to deal with the frigid year-long winter. One such brand is Svedka. Assorted homemade schnapps called acquavit are also popular.

  • You actually have reindeer and you occasionally eat them.

  • IKEA! How could I forget that? Minimalist arts too.

  • You eat meatballs, smoked salmon, and a variety of herring-based sauces and creams. (I'm basing this on what they sell at IKEA.)

  • You probably listen to death metal.

/r/AskReddit Thread