“This is ridiculous and why this is no place for me,” Banks wrote on X, in a post showing a screenshot from a Wikipedia page on Sweden’s dance permit law.
“Damn I wonder if anyone ever plays loud music like NYC or if they have block parties, but this is just insane I can’t…” she wrote.
Wait, what? Dance law?
Yes. Long story, but up until 2023 it was illegal for bars or restaurants to allow guests to dance if they didn’t have a permit, as a result of a law originally brought in in 1956 following a decade of growing moral panic over dansbaneeländet, or "the vice of the dance floor".
This didn’t really mean that police went around fining people who just happened to get up and dance spontaneously, but if a bar or restaurant had clearly planned an event in advance where people had been dancing – getting a DJ and dance floor, for example – and hadn’t applied for a permit, the police could shut it down.
After 2023 the law was changed so that the permit requirement no longer applies to bars and restaurants, although they do still need to inform police if there will be dancing outside or if the amount of people attending the event could pose a disturbance to safety or public order.
What else has Banks said about Sweden?
It’s not the first time the rap star has complained about Sweden. Back in 2019, she wrote the would “really love to see someone bomb the sh*t out of” the country, calling Swedes “ugly blonde pigs”.
She seems to have changed her mind about Sweden since then, and appears to have moved to Stockholm in March 2025.
According to Sweden's public radio broadcaster SR, she came to make music with the Swedish DJ Kornél Kovács, who has said she messaged him on Instagram and was then at his doorstep the very next day.
Swedish style
“These Swedes are really on another level style wise,” she wrote in a post on March 3rd, where she said that Sweden is better than other major European destinations in France, Italy, the UK and Germany.
Her opinion on Swedish style seems to have changed between March and April, when she said in a different post that the Swedes are “broke, stuck up with yellow teeth and wearing second hand clothes”.
Food and shopping
She also praised the Swedish capital for its food, saying that “uber eats in Stockholm is fine dining,” especially the falafel bowl from Stockholm chain Le Kebab.
Banks said she liked department store Åhlens “a lot” but that IKEA is “pretty cheap and tragic”.
“Acne Studios just needs to absorb IKEA and take over,” she wrote.
Swedish social life
Banks said in a different post in April that Swedes have an “awkward social dynamic” and that she was considering moving to Berlin.
“The hole in Stockholm for me is the awkward social dynamic between Swedes in general, they literally ignore each other in passing, it's weird and very cold” she wrote.
“Americans are just more social and the general sterility of human interaction in Sweden all across the board is definitely going to be an issue for me. I’ll give it a year but Berlin is looking more and more like where I’d actually thrive.”
Swedish laundry
Laundry rooms are also different in Sweden compared to in America, according to Banks.
“Laundry is a very social activity in America where you meet hot guys and get a chance to socialize with your neighbours,” she wrote in a text conversation shared as a screenshot in a post on X on April 25th, saying that it is “lonely” in Sweden.
“Also the time restrictions f*cking suck. Not enough time to really clean [your] sh*t. That’s why Swedes clothes so f*cking ashy, you have no choice but to throw everything in because [you're] limited.”
In a post with a picture of her laundry, she wrote that her clothes were still wet and she’d have to air dry them to have time to clean all her laundry in her time slot.
“This is oppressive, laundry is supposed to be relaxing,” the post reads.
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