Swedes love to think of their royals as ordinary, down-to-earth sorts. And indeed, pictures this week of Princess Madeleine trying to sort out her brother’s ‘fogeyish’ dress-sense might have made them look like any other family. It was left up to the king himself to show his offspring the way to party royally.
Sweden is the sixth least corrupt country in the world, it was revealed this week - news that seemed to come as a surprise to the press after the scandals at Skandia and Systembolaget. But as if to underline that even Sweden is not immune from dodgy dealing, a court decided that eleven million crowns that a man had admitted accepting in bribes could pass to his children.
Mijailo Mijailovic, the man convicted of killing Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh last year, has renounced his Swedish citizenship. The news broke just hours after he was admitted to hospital in Stockholm due to fears that he was suicidal.
Reform of Sweden's byzantine housing market is a slow business. And this week stories of rent controls, a desperate shortage of student housing in the main cities and a record level of borrowing were signs that finding a place to live isn't getting any easier.
Nothing makes a finance minister more popular than increasing spending, particularly if he’s a social democrat. But the money has to come from somewhere, and when Bosse Ringholm unveiled his budget this week, critics were ready to pounce. And the appointment of a new party secretary for the Social Democrats exposed divisions over Europe, and left the opposition salivating.
Normally, when opposition parties declare an aim to take power, it doesn’t merit much attention. But this is Sweden, where power changes hands roughly as often as it does in North Korea, and the Social Democrats have ruled for 65 of the last 74 years. So signs that the right wing opposition might be on the verge of providing a serious alternative government threatens to make Swedish politics, well, exciting.
He has towered over Swedish politics for the best past of the last decade. But could Göran Persson's career be entering its final stages? Persson's 'approval ratings' have plummeted since April, and although his position is safe for the time being, speculation about his possible successor has been building. And some are wondering whether the Swedish government could soon have its first female leader.
Travelling around Stockholm could be about to get a whole lot easier, if all the plans outlined in this week's news come to anything. There will, it appears, be new tunnels for commuter trains, a proper inner-city boat service, and the crumbling Slussen junction will be replaced by something gleaming and new.
Saddam Hussein has so many cousins that sooner or later one was bound to turn up in Sweden. But when a relative of the former Iraqi dictator arrived on Sweden's doorstep last week, all talk was of security implications and secret service interrogations.
It must be galling to be a Swedish member of parliament sometimes. You submit yourself for election, turn up for votes and make endless speeches to an empty chamber, yet your chances being promoted to the cabinet are minimal.
The organizers of the "Ung08" youth festival in Stockholm had thought of everything, as they planned to spend the budget that they were given by the council on games, discos and concerts, to keep schoolkids on their summer break out of mischief.
Summer gives newspapers a headache. Everyone who is anyone is either sheltering from the rain in their summer cottages or making the suntan-crazy Swedes mad with jealousy by developing unnaturally orange hues on some Croatian island. This means that relatively unremarkable events are reported in often mind-numbing detail.
When the phone rings just as Lena Philipsson is about to start gyrating with her microphone on Allsång på Skansen, it's bound to be someone trying to flog you fetching new underwear. This may be why the country's 'no call register' has doubled in length in the past year. DN reported on Wednesday that 5,000 people are signing up every week, but people not on the register are getting more calls than ever.
Sweden's reputation as a haven for refugees took a beating this week. While seventies and eighties Sweden had one of the world's most liberal immigration policies, the country now grants fewer applications for residency than the European average. And the stress of waiting is having a worrying effect on refugees' health.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that one does not come to Sweden for the weather, Greek islands being a somewhat safer bet for larks in the sun. If a few decent summers had persuaded Swedes that global warming was working in their favour, this summer's rain-drenched barbequeues have had them reaching for the fake tan.
The Swedish man held without trial by American forces in the Guantanamo Bay base on Cuba has spoken out for the first time since he returned to Sweden, protesting his innocence and vowing to sue the American authorities for his detention.
You might think that avoiding the attentions of the paparazzi would give the Swedish royals enough to contend with, but it appears that criminal sorts are also determined to ruin the peace of their summer holidays.
For Swedish youngsters on the look out for artificial stimulation, the Internet has proved a ready source of recreational drugs, and websites selling controlled drugs are booming. However, the more reputable face of Internet drug sales is falling on hard times.
Occasionally, one is given the impression that Swedish journalists wished they lived somewhere just a little more scandal-ridden. With such a well-behaved populace, it's sometimes difficult to find something to get worked up about. Nonetheless, this week a train timetable and Bosse Ringholm, the finance minister, gave them something to get their teeth into.
Mijailo Mijailovic, the man convicted of murdering the Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, has been appealing against his conviction. Much of the appeal centred on Mijailovic's mental health, and whether he intended to kill Lindh.
Ah, the joys of early summer! The glories of Swedish wildlife have had time to regroup after the privations of winter, and have started to throng our cities and countryside. The Swedes, being nature-loving sorts, couldn't be happier.
There are two kinds of foreigners in Sweden. There is the kind that grumbles about taxes, light deprivation and System Bolaget's opening hours. And then there is the rest.
If you restricted yourself to reading the headlines in the Swedish press, you might not have been sleeping so easily recently. Columbine-style school massacres have been planned and gangsters have escaped their prison guards to prowl the streets of Stockholm. The headlines, however, only ever tell half the story.
