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October was a record month for The Local Sweden

Emma Löfgren
Emma Löfgren - [email protected]
October was a record month for The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden's Stockholm team: Catherine Edwards and Emma Löfgren. Photo: Nele Schröder"

Almost 1.75 million people read The Local Sweden last month – more than in any month since it was founded in 2004.

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The figure – 1,744,916 unique visitors to be precise – for October was a 20 percent increase on The Local Sweden's previous record and more than double that of October last year.

It follows a strong spell for thelocal.se, where reader figures have not dipped below one million for five months (and the third consecutive month of more than 1.3 million).

So what is everyone reading?

We have Saga Vanecek – the young Swedish-American girl who pulled a pre-Viking era sword from a lake – to thank for our by far most-read story of the month. The Local was first to report the news in English and our interview with Saga spread far and wide, with outlets such as the BBC, CNN and many others sharing it.

In other news, work permit deportations are sadly becoming a long-running theme in Sweden. We will keep fighting our readers' corner on this issue, so please get in touch if you have any feedback. Last month we spoke to US entrepreneur Peter Lincoln, who was forced to leave Sweden because he paid himself too low a salary.

But readers also keep coming to The Local to follow our coverage of the Swedish election and post-election negotiations. Looking back another month, it was great having so many of you around the globe following our live election blog, and we also teamed up with Politico for a joint newsletter explaining the results.

In Malmö, our new southern Sweden correspondent Richard Orange investigated how the city managed to turn some of its worst schools around, got a dialect expert to explain the Scanian accent and celebrated Malmö's international food culture (and the best places to grab a cheap-but-scrumptious lunch).

Our new Swedish word of the day series is also proving popular, so thank you for suggesting more language articles. If you have any favourite Swedish words, you can submit them to [email protected].

October was a solid month for the rest of The Local's European network as well, with more than 5.81 million unique visitors reading our nine news sites. It is now one year since we launched Membership of The Local, and as of today our sites are read by 6,500 paying Members. Find out how to become one of them here.

FOR MEMBERS: Guides, analysis, interviews, in-depth features and much more

But we still want to do more and we want to do it even better. For us, Membership is about readers joining in and getting something back, so please feel free to join the conversation on The Local by posting comments under articles, joining us at events and helping guide (or write) future articles by giving us your input.

If you have a business to market, contact my colleagues to find out what we offer advertisers.

Thank you for supporting The Local. I can't promise more ancient swords being pulled from lakes by child archaeologists, but I can promise that we will work to ensure this remains the best place to get everything you need to know about Sweden and life here, whether it's news or expert advice. I hope you'll keep reading.

Best regards,

Emma Löfgren
[email protected]
Editor, The Local Sweden 

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