Sweden

Murder in the dark: The Eighth House, by Linda Segtnan, reviewed

20 April 2024 9:00 am

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?

19 April 2024 2:28 am

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

13 April 2024 9:00 am

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

What does the European centre-right stand for?

29 July 2023 9:00 am

Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), dropped the bomb last weekend. In a TV interview, Merz…

Why Europe riots

8 July 2023 9:00 am

What’s behind the rise of gang violence across Europe?

Why Europe’s shift to the right may cost the Tories

24 June 2023 9:00 am

On her recent visit to Washington, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves presented herself as the perfect candidate to be the next…

Covid and the politics of panic

3 June 2023 9:00 am

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?

25 January 2023 3:32 am

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'

29 June 2022 9:12 pm

Finland and Sweden will be formally invited to join Nato today. Them joining the alliance will bolster Nato’s presence in the…

The danger of learning too much from Covid

21 May 2022 9:00 am

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

11 May 2022 12:55 am

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

21 April 2022 3:50 am

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?

14 April 2022 5:30 pm

In the past six weeks, Finland and Sweden’s security policies have changed more than they have over the past six…

Is Julian Assange on a hiding to nothing?

5 February 2022 9:00 am

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

20 November 2021 7:30 pm

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

26 June 2021 4:00 pm

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

1 June 2021 2:42 am

A large, investigative collaboration between Scandinavian public service outlets and European newspapers such as Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung has…

Is Sweden ready for a woke monarchy?

29 May 2021 9:00 am

Is Sweden ready for a woke monarchy?

Sweden, Covid and lockdown – a look at the data

18 May 2021 2:20 am

Over the last year, the debate about lockdown has been driven to extremes – everyone has, by now, made up their…

The economics of learning languages

27 February 2021 9:00 am

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

17 November 2020 4:45 am

Sweden has been pretty much the only country in the world to have responded to coronavirus using a voluntary system: advising,…

Letters: How Nicola Sturgeon outdoes Boris

31 October 2020 9:00 am

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

17 October 2020 9:00 am

An idea gains ground that we shouldn’t go abroad any more: that the very act of travelling without urgent reason…

What percent of Covid deaths were directly from Covid?

25 August 2020 9:30 pm

Just how many people have died of Covid-19, as opposed to having died with the virus? It is a poignant…

How Covid spread in Sweden's care homes

10 August 2020 11:11 pm

Why did Covid prove so lethal in care homes? Between 2 March and 12 June, there were 66,112 deaths of…