The Local's Blog

Swedish ice hockey: from sex toys to somersaults

Miscellaneous: November 19th, 2009 at 11:11 am by DL

Last season, it was flying dildos that made Leksand of Sweden’s Allsvenskan hockey league a household name.

And while sex toys sailing through the air may have been a one-time (albeit memorable) occurrence, the scrappy team from central Sweden has once again found itself in the international limelight.

Taking the mantel from Leksand’s Jan Huokko, who was the object of last year’s famed ‘dildo downpour’, is 18-year-old up-and-comer Henrik Andersen.

Normally, a goal by a virtual unknown in the country’s second highest league wouldn’t draw much attention…even if  it’s a rather nifty score.

But it’s not the goal that has everybody talking.

Rather, it’s Andersen’s jump for joy after notching his first goal in the league that has catapulted this budding hockey talent from obscurity to overnight sensation.

Andersen celebrated the score, the first in a 4-0 drubbing of opposing Björklöven on Tuesday night, by not merely jumping, but more or less taking a flying leap right through the plexiglass behind the goal.

The YouTube clip of Andersen’s unintentional celebratory somersault over the boards (see below), already linked to by sports websites across North America, is certainly on its way to becoming a highlight reel classic.

If only Andersen could have matched the grace he displayed in slyly slipping the puck past the goalie when he tumbled into the crowd. On the bright side, he’s likely caught the attention of NHL scouts, although not necessarily in the way he intended.

And speaking of Huokko, he announced on Wednesday – the day following Andersen’s acrobatics – that he’s retiring from professional hockey due to a career-ending knee injury. Hopefully he’ll be able to find something to keep him satisfied during all his new-found free time.

The question now is, who will be Leksand’s next international star?

(To see the clip with a classical music soundtrack, click here)

Is English becoming too prevalent in Sweden?

Miscellaneous: November 4th, 2009 at 2:09 pm by PO

The BBC sends a reporter to Sweden to seek out voices in the great language debate.

Says Swedish singer Samson for President:

“I do not believe in some sort of fascist regime where you protect the Swedish and exclude international cultures, I do not think that you are supposed to only be allowed to sing in Swedish about Karl-Åke that dances on some bridge somewhere in the archipelago.”

But not everyone is enamoured with the onward march of the English language. Read the article for more.

Blurring of reality after SVT cleavage row

Miscellaneous: October 22nd, 2009 at 3:50 pm by PO

Public broadcaster SVT has blurred out a presenter’s cleavage following a volley of complaints from viewers caught unawares as the camera panned from northern Sweden’s slopes to those of the reporter.

SVT’s complaints flashboard lit up after Helene Albrektson from Västerbottensnytt stripped to her bikini as part of a segment on weather conditions in Tärnaby. With piste-keepers resorting to artificial snow, it was perfectly feasible for skiers to shed their winter wear and go jump in a lake.

This was illustrated by the camera operator zooming in on Albrektson’s cleavage as she prepared to brave the chilly waters.

Not acceptable, said SVT’s higher-ups, as a decision was taken to liberally apply the infamous blur effect that is generally reserved for heinous criminals.

Expressen TV is there with the before and after (segment follows a short advert).

Reinfeldt bursts into song (with Chavez on air guitar)

Miscellaneous: October 22nd, 2009 at 3:27 pm by PO

So it turns out that Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has a beautiful singing voice. Watch and learn as he joins great musical talents such as Hugo Chavez, Gordon Brown and Barack Obama.

Listen without prejudice as the Täby tunesmith offers hope of “a better world to live in for future generations”.

We lost – crack open the champagne

Miscellaneous: October 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 am by JS

We’d spent the afternoon practicing our Oscar-loser rictus smiles, in preparation for the moment that Dagens Nyheter was declared Digital Newspaper of the Year. The practice was not in vain.

Arriving at the gala at Stockholm’s Clarion Sign Hotel, we should perhaps have been nervous. Indeed, many of the other nominees appeared to be really on edge. But at The Local’s table we were just delighted to be plied with free food and booze. Besides, it was fun to have been invited to party with Sweden’s big media names.

It was really only after the winner was announced and we saw the delight on the faces of the DN.se staff that we realised that this was quite a big deal.

The staff of the website of one of Sweden’s oldest, highest-circulation and best-resourced newspapers (and a jolly good site it is too), were whooping for joy and cracking open the champagne when they won this prize. And we, the little ol’ Local, had managed to get nominated alongside them, despite having a tiny fraction of their resources and brand recognition.

That, in our book, was cause for a little celebration of our own.

Yes, we would have been even happier if we had won the big, shiny prize. But we’re still pretty chuffed. Honest.

The Local: it’s us against the titans

Miscellaneous: September 15th, 2009 at 12:09 pm by JS

The Local's staff - happy bunnies

But yesterday, when Medievärlden called to tell me The Local was nominated for their Digital Media of the Year prize, I was (to use a cricketing term) absolutely knocked for six, as were all my colleagues. Reader, I can assure you that in this case The Local certainly did not nominate itself.

Once we’d managed to stop ourselves running around screaming like momentarily deranged Beatles fans, our amazement was compounded when we found out that our co-nominees were DN.se (the website of Sweden’s largest quality daily Dagens Nyheter) and Dagen.se (the website of a well-known Christian newspaper).

To put it into context, Dagens Nyheter has a staff of 580 and Dagen has a staff of 60. The Local, on the other hand, has a full-time staff of just 11. That includes all editors, journalists, business developers, salespeople, IT developers and managers in Sweden AND Germany. Even when you add in our varied band of talented freelancers, we’re still nowhere near half the size of Dagen, let alone DN.

Not only are we smaller in many respects than our competitors – we are also much younger. We were founded in 2004; DN, by contrast, was founded in 1864; Dagen was founded in 1945 (although naturally their websites are rather younger than that). Yet despite being so young and having so few staff, we managed to reach 2.1 million unique visitors last month (of which 1.2 million were visiting the Swedish site).

It would, of course, be astonishing if we were to win the prize – the competition is tough, to say the least (I know I’m supposed to say this, but this time it just happens to be true).

But just getting nominated is a welcome pat on the back for us, and particularly for Paul O’Mahony, editor of thelocal.se, and our associate editor David Landes. They thoroughly deserve the recognition.

Moreover, the nomination is a nod to only to The Local, but also to our loyal readers – a new generation of diverse, mobile, internationally-minded people who want to get involved in the societies in which they live.

But perhaps the most important thing about this is that it will spur us on to keep improving what we do – and to continue developing our plans to take The Local to new places around Europe with renewed vigour.

Thanks for all your support!

James Savage

Swedish hip hop act ‘America’s newest pop sensation’: Colbert

Miscellaneous: August 4th, 2009 at 2:29 pm by DL

Last week an unlikely trio of Swedes showed up on the Colbert Report, the popular mock current affairs program on Comedy Central that lampoons the numerous right-wing blowhards who populate other US broadcast outlets.

The three natives of Luleå in northern Sweden make up the “swing-hip-hop-jazz” band Movits (yes, there actually are Swedish swing-hip-hop’jazz acts).

All three donned nearly identical hairdos and oversized Buddy Holly-esque glasses as they took questions from Colbert about the challenges of living in a “socialist state”�.

They then performed (in Swedish) their single Fel Det av Gården (’Wrong part of the garden’).

The episode is set to air in Sweden on tonight, but in the week since the show’s broadcast in the US, the men of Movits, which Colbert claims he discovered on the news aggregator website reddit.com, have seen themselves catapulted from virtual obscurity into the pop culture spotlight.

Later in the week, Colbert erupted into a self-congratulatory fit on a follow up episode, claiming that he was solely responsible for the band’s meteoric rise on the Amazon sales list – from 93,400 to number 75.

And he probably was.

‘Virginity has never been a big thing in Sweden’

Miscellaneous: July 13th, 2009 at 10:38 am by PO

Columnist Jonathan Power provides Prospect readers with a potted guide to Sweden. It’s not all sex and loose morals you know. Or is it? Nobel committee secretary Horace Engdahl gives his view:

Urbanisation came late in Sweden, and consequently the influence of the middle class with its strict norms of sexual behaviour has been limited.

Read the full article. It’s worth it.

Howling at the midnight sun

Miscellaneous: July 3rd, 2009 at 9:15 am by DL

Swedes never miss a chance to celebrate the arrival of summer and the extended twilight that displaces winter’s cold endless nights.

But sometimes, alcohol-soaked celebrations can go a bit overboard, with consequences that are normally shrouded in darkness suddenly laid bare for all to see in the bright glare of the midnight sun.

The phenomenon is made all too clear by this recent video clip shot in Östersund in northern Sweden at around 10pm in the evening.

Hard to say what’s more difficult to believe (especially for folks who haven’t spend time above the 60th parallel in June): the rampage or the claim that the video was shot at just two hours before midnight.

Click here to check out the original video on YouTube

Revenge is a dish best served half naked

Media, National: June 17th, 2009 at 5:27 pm by PO

The daughter of one of Sweden’s most feared criminals has posed for a popular men’s magazine in a bid to bring shame on her father and give him “a taste of his own medicine”.

In an interview with lad mag Slitz, Jackie Ferm explained that she wanted her father, Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt, to feel ashamed in the same way she felt ashamed all the way through school.

It’s not surprising that young Jackie had a hard time of it. Svartenbrandt is one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals and has spent more than forty years in jail for a string of robberies and violent crimes. He was last arrested as recently as April.

But Jackie admits that she did have a way of responding to the kids who taunted her which involved judicious use of her father’s reputation.

“I told them he’d come and murder them if they didn’t watch out,” said Ferm.

Japanese pineapple popstar bounces back

Miscellaneous, Offbeat: June 3rd, 2009 at 3:52 pm by PO

Remember the Japanese popstar dressed as a pineapple who was assaulted in Malmö earlier this year. Of course you do.

Well, you’ll be glad to hear that Hideki Kaji made a speedy recovery and the video he was shooting at the time of the attack has seen the light of day. We’ve been meaning to post it for ages. Here it is:

Sweden’s ’socialist nightmare’ on The Daily Show

Media, Swedish Life: April 23rd, 2009 at 9:37 am by PO

Sweden is often demonised in some quarters stateside as a socialist nightmare where suicide is a national sport and abject misery is the norm. The Daily Show investigates, with hilarious consequences:

Part 1…

… and Part 2

The Local’s new blogs unveiled

Miscellaneous: April 21st, 2009 at 2:11 pm by PO

With no ado whatsoever, The Local is proud to present a new section on the site that is fast filling up with a nifty collection of Sweden-related blogs:

Savage Politics

The Local’s own James Savage rips open the steaming carcass of Swedish politics and feeds it to the circling vultures. Oh wait, it won’t be quite as savage as that I’m told, but we can guarantee insights aplenty from our in-house policy wonk wannabe.

Chasing Conan

Swedish high school graduate Mollie Söderlind is smart, sassy and self-assured. Sadly, she also suffers from a desperate lack of fame. Make no mistake, Mollie has what it takes to be a star but only when she makes her first appearance on the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien will she feel she has sampled the sweet taste of success.

Julie’s Nordic Island

Accomplished writer Julie Lindahl shares her thoughts on Nordic wellbeing from the idyllic vantage point of her island home. With a US literary prize in her baggage and a book in the offing, Julie’s island promises to be a place well worth revisiting.

Eating Out with Alannah

Regular travel contributor Alannah Eames separates the sturgeon’s roe from the cheap cod in this informative guide to restaurants and cafes in the Swedish capital and beyond.

Louice Minds the Gap

Meet Louice Tapper Jansson, a Swedish high school student graduating this summer and just a gap year away from the rest of her life. Follow her to the Stockholm cafe where she’s about to start work as she bridges the gap between adolescence and adulthood.

Stripes News

Långholmen FC and The Local have teamed up this season in a bid to push the English-speaking Division 4 club a step further up the ladder that leads to Allsvenskan. The players have started the league season with two wins and are already looking like they really mean business this year. Fixtures, interviews, match reviews… it’s all on Stripes News.

Blattebella

Part American, part Philipino and part terrier, Elizabeth Dacey-Fondelius reclaims the derogatory Swedish term blatte and remoulds it into a thing of beauty. This raven-headed exile promises to give Blondinbella, the darling of the Swedish blogosphere, a serious run for her money.

Mareike’s Glasses

Mareike Neumann, a student at Lund University, casts a sideways glance at Swedish style and fashion through her perfectly calibrated German shades. A fun-loving follower of fashion, Mareike will be posting regular updates from her recurring reconnaissance missions in the nightlife hotspots of the deep south.

Coming Soon

Laura’s Linguistic Plunders

She’s young, she’s clever and she’s moving to Sweden. But while Laura Xiao may be a dab hand at table tennis, she doesn’t speak a word of Swedish. Follow Laura on an educational journey in which she aims to advance from tentative toe-dipping in the vast linguistic morass to mastery of Strindberg in his native tongue.

Curious by Design

For anyone with even a passing interest in Swedish form and function, Charlotte West’s spanking new blog is an indispensable one-stop-shop for all the latest happenings from the country’s ever vibrant design scene.

Game Reactor

Sweden is a major player in the computer and video game arenas. Here the biggest gaming site in the Nordic region scales the levels, rescues the damsels and shoot ups the bad guys, and all in English too.

Wine Freedom

Australian wine importer Mark Majzner takes a long hard look at the Swedish alcohol retail monopoly and doesn’t always like what he sees. The Wine Freedom blog traces his often bruising attempts to spread the joys of Australian wines in a country with famously restrictive alcohol policies.

There are a few more blogs in the pipeline set for launch in the coming weeks. Watch this space…

By the way, the daily poll is to be found nestled snugly under the highlights panel until further notice.

Swedish gender equality: in name only?

Miscellaneous, Newsbites, Opinion, Politics: April 9th, 2009 at 1:41 pm by CW

It’s not just Sweden’s party princess who answers to the name Madeleine anymore.

The battle between the Swedish Tax Authority (Skatteverket) and individuals who want to choose unconventional (or as Skatteverket likes to call it, “inappropriate”) names continues to rage, but this time it might just slay one of Sweden’s sacred cows: gender equality.

The Swedish administrative court of appeals has granted a 28-year-old Sandviken transexual, the right to be called Immanuel, overturning a decision by the Swedish Tax Agency that the male moniker was unsuitable for a woman. Jan-Olov Ågren, a male cross-dresser from northern Sweden, won a similar victory in his bid to go by the name Madeleine last November.

Good for the court of appeals, and let’s hope the Supreme Administrative Court upholds the rulings if Skatteverket appeals the decisions, as it confirmed it plans to do. While Skatteverket’s decisions to prevent people from changing their names to things like Dark Night or naming their children after fruit at least make some sense, the Tax Authority’s reticence to embrace unusual names in these particular cases flies in the face of Sweden’s extremely explicit dedication to gender equality.

Gender also comes into the picture when it comes to what parents call their kids. Last year, Skatteverket told a couple in Stockholm that they may not keep the name Elvis for their five-month old daughter on the grounds “that Elvis is a first name of a masculine type and as such may, in light of standard practice, be considered clearly inappropriate as a first name for a woman.” Just last week, Sveriges Radio reported that Skatteverket also ruled against a mother in Jönköping who wanted to name her six-month-old daughter David, claiming it was an unsuitable name for a girl.

How can this even be an issue in a country that castrates heraldic lions in the name of gender equality?

The Local helps you find the perfect home

Miscellaneous: March 19th, 2009 at 4:49 pm by JS

Buying a home in a new country can be confusing. You are faced with a whole new property vocabulary, you are unfamiliar with the local estate agents and it can be hard to get an overview of the market.

Now The Local has teamed up with Swedish property search engine Booli to offer an easy, English-language search of Sweden’s property market. At www.thelocal.se/property you can search for your dream home among 20,000 houses and apartments on sale in Sweden today.

The service allows you to search by location, price and type of home. So whether you are looking for a little Swedish cottage by the sea as a summer-home or a Gothenburg apartment suitable for a family, The Local’s property page can help get your search started.

Start your search here: www.thelocal.se/property

Sweden on the brink of Eurovision war

Media, Music, National, Opinion, Politics, Swedish Life: March 18th, 2009 at 4:34 pm by PO

Everybody panic! The Local has inadvertently sparked what the Swedish press is referring to as the ‘Tingeling Crisis’.

Now as crises go, it’s hardly Cuba or the Berlin Blockade. But in a land such as Sweden, gripped with Eurovision fever, revelations that the Russians were less than pleased with an interval song and dance number at the Melodifestivalen final have quickly spread far and wide.

It started innocently enough: communist whores with red stars on their panties, rampant Russian gangsters, wild Cossack dancers and a bear on a chain… what could possibly go wrong?

“We do not react to eccentricity by some lunatics whose Russophobia should place them in an asylum rather than on Globen’s stage,” the embassy told The Local on Monday morning.

Oh, that.

Regional tabloid giant Aftonbladet led the charge with a front page splash and the rest of the Swedish papers soon followed.

Like political voting patterns at the Eurovision, the situation soon spiraled out of control:

State broadcaster SVT sent a bouquet of flowers to the Russian embassy as a gesture of goodwill. The embassy responded that, as far as it was concerned, the danger had passed and Euro-harmony could prevail.

Expressen said SVT was foolish to have apologised.

The state broadcaster said it never really had apologised and the retraction was retracted.

The comedian behind the skit said he might have to rethink a planned Trans-Siberian railroad trip this summer .

The Social Democrats’ foreign policy spokesman said the Swedish foreign ministry should stand up for freedom of expression.

Even Vladimir Lenin was dusted off and dragged into the debate.

Furthermore, the finer points of Russian sensibilities and Swedish humour have been discussed at length on television and radio talk shows.

The upshot: Nuclear war has been averted for now. But never again must we allow such a frightening array of outdated clichés to threaten our peace and security.

—

In case you missed it, here’s the clip that almost pushed us to the brink:

A silent cartel protecting Sweden’s sacred cows?

Miscellaneous: February 18th, 2009 at 5:10 pm by JS

Don’t know about you, but when I peer into other people’s baskets in Systembolaget, most of them aren’t buying fancy wines. Kopparbergs cider, yes. Sofiero beer, check. Mauro wine, by the carton. The Swedish booze monopoly might boast of its wonderful selection, but relatively few of those shopping there take advantage of this.

The big threat, then, to Systembolaget’s continued existence, is the potential for people to get already cheap booze even more cheaply. Smuggling is one worry for monopoly defenders; another is people buying their six-month supply of booze in Denmark, Germany or Estonia and ignoring Systembolaget altogether.

On the scale of threats to Systembolaget, Aussie vintner Mark Majzner must rank pretty low. Majzner is not funneling cheap booze over the border; his company, Antipodes Premium Wines, simply sells interesting wines otherwise not available in Sweden. He’s not aiming at the street drinker or the schoolkid – he’s targeting that endangered species: the Swedish bon viveur.

Why, then, has he been treated so unprofessionally by Kooperativ Förbundet, one of Sweden’s largest supermarket operators? Majzner explains the whole episode in The Local’s opinion section, but to give the short version: KF, owner of Coop, had signed a deal with him that would allow people to order his wine via their website. After months of preparations by Antipodes Premium Wines, the service was days from going live when KF pulled the plug. He says they did so unilaterally and basically with no more detailed explanation than ‘the members wouldn’t wear it.’

Majzner, rightly, smells a rat. The stench got stronger when Posten also refused to continue delivering his wine, despite having done so for months.

The extraordinary question is, was a cartel of self-interested organizations within Sweden’s ‘Folkhem’ working to protect Systembolaget – one of its own? That’s the question being asked by the Financial Times. Their Stockholm correspondent David Ibison points out:

.

It is easy to forget the depth and breadth of Sweden’s leftwing heritage, but the fact remains that it has been ruled for most of the past 70 years by the Social Democrats, who set up most of the state-run monopolies. The country’s right-leaning government is a rare exception to the rule.

Your neighbour’s income is none of your business

Media: February 11th, 2009 at 11:48 am by PO

The Local’s Managing Editor James Savage has just had an article published on Swedish opinion website Newsmill. “Your neighbour’s income is none of your business“, he argues.

At the bottom of every Newsmill article, readers are asked for their opinion. In this case, the question up for “milling” is: How do you feel about publication of income details? Angry, bored, curious or happy [Arg, Uttråkad, Nyfiken, Glad].

For those of you who speak Swedish, we recommend you have a read and have your say.

The article will also be published in English on The Local next week. But even if you don’t speak Swedish, here’s the central argument if you want to pop over to Newsmill and give your view:

The purpose of the principle public access to official documents is for citizens to hold the state to account, in the public interest. The way politicians and state employees use their power and the public’s money should, of course, be open to public scrutiny. Finding out other people’s incomes might be interesting to the public, but that does not mean that it is in the public interest.

See also - Newspaper rich lists: public service or invasion of privacy?

Sometimes journalists can be real dogs…

Miscellaneous: January 21st, 2009 at 11:24 am by DL

We were tickled to read recent story in the Daily Telegraph citing a Swedish study which, the paper claims:

found strong evidence that breeding for appearance has led to a decline in intelligence  [in dogs].

Intrigued, The Local set about getting in touch with the study’s author, Kenth Svartberg, who, according to the Telegraph, was affiliated with Stockholm University.

But Svartberg wasn’t listed on the school’s personnel roster, although an employee in the biology department told us he had authored a study about dogs back in 2006.

Finally getting in contact with Svartberg, we learned that he no longer works at Stockholm University, but instead operates a dog training business.

He confirmed that the study cited by the Telegraph was published several years ago. What’s more, he was a bit hot under the collar at the way his research had been portrayed.

“The study had nothing to do with intelligence in dogs, per se,” he told The Local.

He claimed the paper had “misrepresented” his findings and suspects it did so in order to contribute to an ongoing debate in the UK  about the breeding of so-called “hand-bag” dogs.

So much for journalists being a man’s best friend.

Egypt: ‘Give back our artifacts’

Miscellaneous: January 21st, 2009 at 10:43 am by PO

Cairo has called on a Swedish museum to return more than 200 artworks taken from Egypt by a Swedish collector in the 1920s. AP has the story.

The artifacts, Hawass said, were taken “in an illegal manner” by Otto Smith, a collector who was digging in Egypt at locations such as Saqqara and Luxor in mid 1920s, when there was a huge appetite for Egyptian artifacts in the West.