A shining beacon of freedom and progress, located in the chilly northern parts of Europe. Neighbour to Denmark, Norway and Finland, and often confused with at least one of them. Most Americans cannot distinguish Sweden from the mountain nation of Switzerland.
Famous for not only its a large population of very
blonde and beautiful women, but also its
history of Vikings, the music of partly forgotten bands
like Abba and very
high taxes. Under the
government of the social democrats, Sweden has the highest tax rate in the world. The corruption is nearly non-existant and the population is well-educated, better than the average European or American citizen. There is no country in the world where
atheism is better established than in Sweden, and the Swedish church, unlike the churches in many other countries, has little real power or influence. Sweden is also the most equal country in the world,
gender-wise.
An overwhelming majority of Swedes surf the web. Although home to a relatively small part of the world (9 million), Sweden still manages to produce
people and projects of great initiative and ingenuity. One of these projets is The
Pirate Bay, the worlds largest BitTorrent tracker site. Another Swedish project is the famous KaZaA, a peer-to-peer fileshare client. Sweden also produces a lot of good gamers, not seldom seen leading the worldwide scoreboards. Sweden is also home to the Nobel Prize committee and host of the majority of Nobel Prizes.
Famous Swedish words in the English language are "smorgasbord", "tungsten" and "ombudsman". Famous Swedish
people are Peter Stormare, Ingrid Bergman, Ingemar Bergman, Stellan Skarsgård, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Alfred Nobel.
