Wind power to the Swedish people. Photo: Johan Ylitalo

This year, the greenhouse effect was at the center of the Swedish public debate, too, and our fairly new government was forced to reconsider its stance and to present one green initiative after another. When the government first came to power, it sometimes seemed as if it believed that all environmental problems lay with polluting nations far away.

The government’s most recent plan is for a giant wind power park outside Piteå in the northern county of Norrbotten, with a total of 6,000 wind turbines. The site was chosen not only because it’s windy but also because only six families live there — which says something about how sparsely populated some remote parts of Sweden are. So it’s not surprising that this year’s top Christmas present was a GPS — an electronic device that makes it easier for two Swedes living far apart to find their way home to each other.

An early eco-activist was the flower king Carl Linnaeus, whose 300th anniversary we celebrated all year. Around my summer cottage I often think about Linnaeus — when I come across the simple little pink flower he named after himself, when I see a crane watching over its young on the edge of the forest and am reminded of all those amusing double-barreled Latin names (the common crane: grus grus; the eagle owl: bubo bubo; the magpie: pica pica), or when a swallow swoops across the lake. Linnaeus thought swallows spent the winter at the bottom of lakes. I like it when even wise people are wrong, and I don’t look forward to the day when we think we know everything.

In our lake, a beaver has just moved in. Nice to have it there but it makes us a bit nervous, and my wife has put netting round all our beautiful birches. The next species heading for our parts is the wild boar, which can transform a lawn into a ploughed field overnight. A recent report shows that if the stock of wild boars is allowed to go on growing at the same pace, these animals will soon outnumber moose in Sweden. This is worrying the tourist sector, which would rather sell souvenirs of the “king of the forest” than of pigs. 

Parental leave has really caught on among Swedish men. Photo: Erika Lidén

Talking of moose, Swedish men continue to claim more and more parental leave. Over the past ten years, the proportion of new dads taking more than two months of leave — out of a total of sixteen months — has risen from 10 to 18 percent. The proportion who “happen to” claim leave during the fall hunting season has actually declined, too.

According to a study by the European Commission, Swedish couples share the housework more evenly than any other couples in the EU — which has no effect on my wife, who recently, for the 18th year in a row, refused to fit the winter tyres on our car.

The same study showed that 94 percent of Swedes felt they led happy lives. The fact that our Danish neighbors claimed to be even happier spoiled our enjoyment a bit. But the study was probably carried out before our national football team ensured that the archrivals in Denmark would not qualify for Euro 2008.

Not mourning Ingmar Bergman is a Swedish sin. Photo: The Royal Library

From happiness to grief. Ingmar Bergman, our most famous cultural figure, died in the summer. Bergman’s endless preoccupation with existential matters, human frailty and mortality, belief in God and mental demons of every kind, reflects to a great extent how we constantly strive for happiness and the difficulty of achieving it.

In India I was once told off by an Indian photographer for not being familiar with Bergman’s latest theater production. But despite Ingmar Bergman’s status as a national cinema icon, many Swedes nowadays, especially young Swedes, have completely different household gods. Strangely enough, one of my own favorites, Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni, died on the same day as Bergman. I still feel a sort of patriotic guilt for mourning the wrong director.

Another sorrowful chapter in 2007 was Sweden’s sporting year, with mediocre performances in areas where we often excel, such as ice hockey, skiing and athletics (aside from Carolina Klüft’s World Championship gold, of course). However, toward the end of the year things started to brighten up a little thanks to top achievements by Swedish gold swimmers, the alpine queen Anja Pärson and the golfing ace Annika Sörenstam — a good starting point for 2008.

Swedish armwrestler Heidi Andersson gives girl power a new meaning. Photo: Peter Jönsson

Other triumphs came in odd women’s events such as trio bowling and wrestling. Also, Heidi Andersson from the northern village of Ensamheten (Solitude) came third in the European Armwrestling Championship. Strong women from villages called Solitude and you begin to understand why most Swedish men under 39 are still single.

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Johan Tell is a travel journalist and author. His latest book is 100 sätt att rädda världen (100 Ways to Save the World), which has been translated into Finnish, Danish, Norwegian and English.

The author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in this article.

Translation: Stephen Croall

Classification: A228EN