Archive for April, 2009

Sweden’s ‘socialist nightmare’ on The Daily Show

Media, Swedish Life: April 23rd, 2009 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 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 by blog

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?