Sweden

Sweden is a parliamentary monarchy in Scandinavia that is part of the EU. However, it has not joined the common currency, the euro. The country remains true to its principle of being free of alliances in peace and neutral in war.

Sweden's most important import and export partner is Germany. The Swedish companies Ikea, H&M, Vattenfall and VOLVO are particularly well known. There are also numerous cultural goods, such as Astrid Lindgren's books (Pippi Longstocking) or the books by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf (Nils Holgersson's wonderful journey through Sweden), the music groups ABBA and Roxette from Sweden. Of course, the crispbread is one of the country's very well-known and popular export products.

Sweden: history

Before the year 1000

About 14,000 years ago what is now Sweden was covered in ice. The oldest known settlement dates from around 10,000 BC. Chr. From 8,000 to 6,000 BC Chr. Was settled the land of tribes. In the Vendel Period around 550-800 AD, the population in Sweden settled down.

According to Abbreviationfinder website, the Viking Age around 800-1050 is characterized by strong expansion. From Sweden, the Viking trains went mainly to the east. In a mixture of raids and trade expeditions along the Baltic Sea coast, the Swedish Vikings reached far into what is now Russiainside. There they set up trading posts and founded short-lived empires, like the Ruriks in Novgorod. They reached the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, where they had trade connections with Byzantium and the Arab world.

From the year 1000 to the 17th century

In the 11th century Sweden was Christianized, whereby paganism with the old Nordic doctrine of gods persisted into the 12th century. The expansion to the east in the 12th and 13th centuries led to the annexation of Finland.

From the middle of the 12th century, there were disputes over secular power between the families of Sverkers and Eriks, who alternated between 1160 and 1250 in royal power. In the 14th century, trade grew primarily with the German cities that had merged under the leadership of Lübeck in the Hanseatic League. Until the middle of the 16th century the Hanseatic League dominated trade in Sweden, on the basis of which many cities were founded.

In 1389 the royal powers in Denmark, Norway and Sweden were united under the reign of the Danish Queen Margaret. Under their leadership, the Kalmar Union was concluded in 1397, in which the three Scandinavian countries recognized the same king. The entire union period from 1397 to 1521, however, was characterized by battles between the royal central power and the high nobility, as well as temporarily rebellious peasants and citizens. The Stockholm carnage of 1520, in which the Danish Union King Christian II.

had more than 80 of the leading Swedish men executed, led to an uprising and the deposition of Christian II, as well as the seizure of power by the Swedish nobleman Gustav Wasa, who was elected King of Sweden in 1523. Under the government of Gustav Wasa (1523-60) the foundations of the Swedish nation state were laid and in 1544 the hereditary rule of the king was enforced.

Since breaking the union with Denmark and Norway, Sweden had worked to gain dominance in the Baltic Sea region. This emerged in the 16th centuryrepeated wars with Denmark, which ended in Sweden's favor. Sweden comprised Finland as well as a number of provinces in the Baltic States and northern Germany and had thus become the leading great power in northern Europe after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the peace with Denmark in Roskilde in 1658.

In the 18th and 19th centuries

After the defeats in the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 against Denmark, Poland and Russia, Sweden lost most of its provinces on the other side of the Baltic Sea and was largely reduced to the areas of today's Sweden and Finland. During the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden lost Finland and the last possessions in northern Germany. King Karl XIV Johan managed to acquire Norway in 1810, which was forced into a union with Sweden in 1814. Since the king had no offspring, they turned to Napoleon to find a strong king he supported. Napoles then made Marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, with the consent of the Swedesto the king of Sweden. He ruled from 1818 to 1844. The Bernadotte family is still the king or queen in Sweden today. Despite many internal conflicts, the union with Norway lasted until 1905, when it was dissolved again in peaceful forms.

In the 20th century

Since the First World War, Sweden has pursued the foreign policy line of remaining free of alliance in peacetime and neutral in war. At the same time, however, Sweden joined the League of Nations in 1920 and the United Nations in 1946 and, under the umbrella of these organizations, took part in various international actions aimed at securing peace. In 1974 a new form of government was adopted in Sweden, according to which all state power comes from the people, who determine the Reichstag in free and secret elections. The government is confirmed by the Reichstag, to which it is also responsible. The king remained head of state. Its activity is limited to purely representative tasks. 1973 climbed

Carl XVI. Gustaf (born 1946) took the throne. In 1976 he married the German Sivia Sommerlath, whom he had met at the 1974 Olympic Games. A change in the Act of Succession to the Throne in 1980 introduced the same right of inheritance for men and women, so that Princess Victoria became heir to the throne in place of her younger brother Carl Philip.

Sweden joined the European Union (EU) on January 1, 1995. It joined the monetary union of the EU (EMU) - which came into force on January 1, 1999 - but has not yet joined.

Since October 2006John Fredrik Reimfeldt from the "Moderate Rally Party" is the 42nd Prime Minister of a center-right coalition of Sweden. His predecessor was the social democrat Göran Persson, who ruled the country from March 1996 until Reimfeldt took office.

On June 19, 2010, the heir to the throne, Crown Princess Victoria, married the middle-class fitness entrepreneur Daniel Westling, to whom she has been engaged since 2001, in Stockholm's Nikolaikirche (Storkyrkan).

In the election for the Swedish Reichstag on 19 . September 2010The four-party alliance of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt won 173 of the 349 seats and thus narrowly missed an absolute majority. The leftist alliance led by the Social Democrats won 156 votes and the far right Sweden Democrats 20 seats.