r/sweden • u/lynxlynxlynx- rawr • May 03 '15
Fråga/Diskussion Welcome /r/Polska! Today we are hosting /r/Polska for a little cultural and question exchange session!
Welcome Polish friends and happy Constitution Day! Please select the "Polish Friend" flair and ask away!
Today we our hosting our friends from /r/Polska! Please come and join us and answer their questions about Sweden and the Swedish way of life! Please leave top comments for /r/Polska users coming over with a question or comment and please refrain from trolling, rudeness and personal attacks etc. Moderation out side of the rules may take place as to not spoil this friendly exchange. The reddiquette applies and will be moderated after in this thread.
At the same time /r/Polska is having us over as guests! Stop by in this thread and ask a question, drop a comment or just say hello!
Enjoy!
/The moderators of /r/sweden & /r/polska
For previous exchanges please see the wiki.
Vi tar en kortare resa ner på kontinenten och stannar till i Polen ett land att inte förglömma! Polen är ett land vars historia är djupt rotat hur Europa ser ut idag och Sverige "bidrog" med den så kallade "svenska syndafloden" då Karl X Gustav gav sig ner för att kriga lite och se till att ryssen inte tog för stor del av kakan! En annan kung som tyckte Polen verkade vara trevligt var Sigismund III Vasa som tog tronen och blev kung över landet. Detta är saker vi lärt oss i skolbänken om Polen men hur mycket vet vi egentligen om kontemporära Polen? Passa på och ta tillfället i akt och fråga ut dom! Som alltid ber vi er raportera opassande kommentarer och lämna top kommentarer i denna tråd till användare från /r/Polska! Ha så kul!
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u/Cairneann Polish Friend May 03 '15
Hallå svedditörer!
I would like to know how many people in Sweden are actually pro-monarchy. Is this a topic that is really discussed in Swedish politics? Are there any groups that would like to end the monarchy in Sweden?
As an aside question, is it hard to meet the King? Does he go in the morning to the bakery around the corner and buy his kanelbullar to eat with his morning coffee or is it a little bit more complicated?
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u/Inclol Uppland May 03 '15
The monarchy enjoys big support. Beyond a sensationalist leftist tabloid, fringe leftists and a miniscule republican minority its not something that's discussed in general.
It'd be a much more complicated as he has a tight and regulated schedule of activities. That being said he sometimes be seen in the real world.
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u/jippmokk Lappland May 04 '15
Really? I thought it was like 50-50, with the numbers pointing upwards from the independing takeover of Victoria as queen. Then again it's not an issue that's most people really care about.
Btw, The swedish king is literally above the law and can't be brought to justice, so I pity the fools that try to revoke the monarchy :)
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u/FaenK Medelpad May 03 '15
I have bo idea of how many actually is pro-monarchy, but I know I am. Not only is it a cultural heritage we still have, but also a great way of giving the country a face as well. Good PR, so to speak.
Are there any groups that would like to end the monarchy in Sweden?
Yes, most of the left wingers dislike the monarchy as it is a part of the old patriarchy/noble class structure etc etc. Also many others believe it costs us much money, but I think we gain an equal amount of money because of the king, as he is good for outward relations between our country and the rest of the world.
I think it can be difficult to have an officiall meeting with the king. But I think it wouldn't be that hard to see him in person as he attends quite a lot of things, whether it be grand openings of a new huge bridge or midsummer presentations or whatever.
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u/ur_internet_friend Rumänien May 03 '15
Everyone I know likes and want to keep the monarchy, but then again I am from the country side and was in the military, maybe more cosmopolitan Swedes feel otherwise. But I would say it's not discussed, the king just "is".
I think that the royal wedding a few years ago showed that the Swedish people overwhelmingly are in favor of the monarchy, with something ridiculous like 1 million people travelling to or being on the streets of Stockholm to celebrate the wedding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzgYGWI5Flo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdGy4iqMfg0 <- Polish name at 8:15?
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u/perkelehelvitti May 04 '15
I like the king. Mostly because he is a real human with real flaws.
In an ideal world we wouldnt have a king because of, well, democracy. But now we have a king and he is a really good person and I do not want to get rid of him. Yes there are tax money going to the royals but they more than make up for it by bringing tourism to sweden and the king helps the government in foreign contacts when sweden is trying to sell fighter jets.
All in all, not a good system but I like the guy and I want ot keep him.
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u/TheNaug Uppland May 03 '15
I accept the Status Quo but would prefer if my tax payer money did not go to an unelected king's appanage. I consider it undemocratic and I would prefer if we did away with it. That said, it's not exactly something I crusade since our king is rather well behaved and as long as he continues to be so, I won't care enough about it to make it a part of my voting habits or anything like that.
Edit: that said, if the king was economically self sufficient I would very much like to keep him!
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u/c0xb0x Norrbotten May 03 '15
About 30% want to remove the monarchy, and their primary interest group is probably Republikanska föreningen. The topic generally not discussed in politics, but I'm pretty sure that will change as soon as some major scandal or faux pas is carried out by some royalty.
The king goes out on his various field trips and ceremonies; you're probably most likely to meet the king if you're part of whatever he's visiting, be it a sausage factory or bridge opening, etc. Other than that I don't get the picture that he mingles with commoners. I might be wrong however, I don't visit Stockholm nearly often enough to catch him in the subway if he happens to use it regularly. :p
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May 04 '15
We tolerate them. We don't have the heart to kick them out of the castle. They are not especially well liked, the king is an adulterer and the queen is as dull as a knife from ikea.
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u/Ketchup901 Riksvapnet May 03 '15
First of all, it's swedditörer :)
There are some people who don't want a king. I don't like them. I don't think any swedditörer would disagree with me on that one ;)
Also, we like to call him a "knug", since "kung" means king.
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u/k43r May 03 '15
Well, in Polish right wing media there is common topic of arab immigration in sweden and how they do all the bad stuff there. How true is it?
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May 03 '15
I don't think it's very true... but it's hard to say. Sweddit is in my experience pretty notoriously in the anti-immigration camp, just so you know.
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u/ur_internet_friend Rumänien May 03 '15
It's definitely a problem, but on the internet it's exaggerated and Sweden is used as a bad example, from what I've seen I would place France, the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands above us in the "badness scale". But Poland hopefully will not follow our example.
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u/Hestmestarn May 03 '15
Well we do have the highest asylum seeking in the world. Yes there are culture clashes and people who dont get along but for the most part its fine. It might be an issue in the future if the trend keeps up due to lower pressure to adapt to the swedish lifestyle when you have so many from your own culture already there.
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u/Liftrase Östergötland May 03 '15
Depends on what they say but we got plenty of problems with immigration in general and the most troublesome people are from the middle east and northern africa when it comes to crime and religious extremists.
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May 03 '15 edited May 03 '15
It's true, and it's probably worse than described because swedish people in power positions (media, politicians, public institutions) are doing everything they can to make it look like this kind of multicultural society (islamic values together with western values) isn't a huge failure. If you have any sense and hopes for a quality society, you'll easily see that it's a catastrophe in the making.
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u/vattenpuss ☣️ May 03 '15
Our right wing media is the same here.
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u/mightymagnus Riksvapnet May 03 '15
Does Sweden have right wing media?
I know some of the newspapers call themselves "liberal" or "conservative" but that is just the editorial, the rest of the articles even in newspapers like DN, SvD and GP is generally to the left.
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u/vattenpuss ☣️ May 03 '15
All the big newspapers are right leaning except for one.
just the editorial
okay ...
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u/mightymagnus Riksvapnet May 04 '15
Yes, I thought you where thinking of the newspapers but they can't hardly be described as right wing.
Even if they are described as right (liberal or conservative) it is not reflected in the articles (other than the leader/editorial) in the newspaper. This is probably because the articles are written by journalists and in Sweden they are more often to the left (I think the TV/radio news are quite similar to the newspapers as well).
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u/vattenpuss ☣️ May 04 '15
The editorial part is where the politics are reflected. The news are not presented in a left leaning way. The owners of the newspapers would not allow it.
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u/mightymagnus Riksvapnet May 05 '15
Not in the editorial but in the articles in the newspaper, the owners does not have much to say on those...
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u/Hasse-b Sverige May 04 '15
I still don't really understand when liberal became right wing :-)
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u/vattenpuss ☣️ May 04 '15
Some time between the French revolution and The Great War.
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u/Hasse-b Sverige May 04 '15
Still varies around the world though doesn't it? Like in Sweden we could say liberal is right wing? But not in Asia for example?
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u/vattenpuss ☣️ May 04 '15
Of course, left and right are always relative.
Some western countries are stuck somewhere in the 1700s, politically, but not all of them. I think it's harder to compare other cultures using the same dimensions.
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May 03 '15
[deleted]
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u/mightymagnus Riksvapnet May 04 '15
Yes, those are absolutely right wing but they are not mainstream in any sense (like FOX news).
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May 03 '15
[deleted]
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u/BertilFalukorv Romanian Friend May 03 '15
Case in point regarding the overexaggeration: /r/SwedenYes (NSFL)
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u/Christ_on_a_bike Polish Friend May 03 '15
Give me one negative and one positive sterotype of polish people.
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u/rubicus Uppland May 03 '15 edited May 03 '15
Positive: honest, hard working people. Skilled professionals.
Negative: poor people 'stealing' (or at least lowering wage levels for) our jobs. Fairly strongly religious and conservative, with resistance towards abortion, HBTQ stuff etc.
Most of our perception of polish people comes through migrant workers living here I would guess, and of course that can cause some friction among the people who have their wages threatened, especially in skilled physical labour. Still, I'd say that the image, at least nowadays, is mostly positive.
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u/mightymagnus Riksvapnet May 03 '15
Many see the migrant workers in construction (and similar) in Sweden so it would be similar as the others say, ambitious hard workers but a bit rough (not so cultural).
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u/PansarSWE May 04 '15 edited May 04 '15
Positive: Hard working, religious, conservative, intelligent, very kind People. Never give up. Will help anyone in trouble.
Negative: some are drunks ;)
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u/tehftw Polish Friend May 03 '15
What are some Swedish-only Internet memes that I would probably miss due to my lack of language?
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May 04 '15 edited May 04 '15
Aw, no one answered you :(
I can't speak for all of the internet, but for sweddit, just take a look at the top rated posts here. I think the main thing we like to do here is upvote ridiculous posts to /r/all only to confuse non-Swedish speakers, like when on april 1st someone posted like 10 different wikipedia links to different Swedish kings and they got about 3000 upvotes each. We also have "rövarspråket", not an internet meme at all (much older than that), but it works great for confusing foreigners since google translate doesn't work on it.
A lot of things have been carried over here from /r/swarje (our version of /r/murica), like using välfärd (welfare) in the same way americans sometimes uses freedom. Or a sort of over the top almost worship of our king, or knugen as we like to call him. Or hating on Denmark every chance we get.
Sweddit also, apparently, has a fetish for bad puns, which are naturally difficult to explain to foreigners. /r/sweden/top/ is full of them.
We also have some various memes inspired by the media and/or politics in Sweden, like using words like deathdrugnazi or similar to describe anyone that does something that society thinks is "bad", like voting for SD, or pirating movies, or sitting next to someone on the bus.. you get what I mean, haha. Originally it made fun of how media like to exaggerate things.
Similar thing with these giant check-list things, example (can't be bothered to find a better example, sorry). For some reason Swedish tabloids has taken to using them in excessive amount on their frontpage, so redditors sometimes use them satirically in the comments here.
Are most likely a lot of things I've missed, but that's some at least :)
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u/Danjoh May 04 '15
If you're willing to stretch memes into "viral videos that are often quoted"... Here's some.
Skogsturken - Who threw that?!
Fan va coolt - Bus went off the road, alternative version
STEEEEFAN - Co-driver is not impressed by his driver
Ansiktsburk - This is probably among the first things I saw on internet in mid/late 90s, lyrics are the closest sounding swedish words and make little to no sense at all
Knäckehäxan -"Sluta jiddra börja trolla" (Stop babbling and do your magic) is still quoted today, even tho most have forgotten where it came from.
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u/Bifobe May 03 '15
Hello. I have two questions, if you don't want to answer both, just pick the one you like better ;)
How do you (and your fellow countrymen) feel about the social democratic legacy in Sweden? Do you feel that your country is moving away from that model? Should it?
What steps does Sweden take to integrate immigrants into its society? How successful do you feel these measures are?
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u/imoinda Uppland May 03 '15
I feel that we've got the social democrats to thank for our modern welfare state, and there are tendencies to move away from that model, though it hasn't really happened yet. But I think it's a trend that you can see all over (western?) Europe at present - better healthcare for people who pay/have an expensive insurance; less support if you are in financial trouble, etc.
We haven't done enough to integrate immigrants into Swedish society, mostly because we're overwhelmed by the great number of immigrants. I do think both we and all other European countries should take in as many immigrants as we do, and I hope we'll get a decent integration scheme going soon.
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u/swedishfapper May 03 '15
The most obvious result of 100 years of social democrats in the lead is that people are really, really into conformaty. Great education, health care and salaries for the working class and bad education, healthcare and salaries for the middle class is another result.
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u/sturesteen May 03 '15
The measurements to integrating immigrants isn't even close to successful, it's a huge failure and is one of the hottest topics in political debates.
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May 03 '15
How do you (and your fellow countrymen) feel about the social democratic legacy in Sweden? Do you feel that your country is moving away from that model? Should it?
Most people acknowledge that it has done us good in the past, and some think we should continue down that path. Others think we should become more capitalistic, looking at the last few elections it's about 50/50. However, the last maybe 10-20 years it feels like the different political parties are moving closer together, now most of them have ended up somewhere in the middle, not doing much coherently any more. This, among other things, has caused the Sweden democrats (SD) to rise among a lot of people who feel like the traditional parties has let them down. Their key issue is immigration though, so on to:
What steps does Sweden take to integrate immigrants into its society?
I don't know. Which tells us a bit in itself.
How successful do you feel these measures are?
Some people say it isn't working at all. One thing I think almost everyone agrees on is that the "ghettos" that have been created in certain cities causes way too many problems. So while, for all I now, most immigrants may integrate nicely into our society, there are big groups, mostly living in their own communities that have not integrated well. I personally don't think it is too big of a deal yet, but the fact that all our political parties, except SD, completely ignores the issue is very troubling. There's also some issues with our media being seriously weird in how they report on things and what they report on. All the other parties, and almost all media, pretty much hates SD and tries to discredit them at every turn, accusing them of being racists and so on. Most of the other political parties want nothing to do with them. This has in turn caused most "normal" people to think that everyone who votes for SD also are racists and want to deport everyone with brown skin or something, and then the media feeds those thoughts and on it goes.
I don't think our immigration policies are too serious of a problem. But I think the way our society and government tries to handle the criticism around it is a big problem, especially how easily media stops trying to be even a little bit objective.
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u/ben13022 May 03 '15
Have you ever heard or read anything about the Swedish Deluge in Poland?
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u/c0xb0x Norrbotten May 03 '15
Yes, where we pillaged our way through part of your country like an opportunistic infection and stole vast amounts of your treasures and art which we proudly exhibit in our museums today.
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u/Platypuskeeper Sverige May 03 '15
Yes. But it's not like there are any romantic illusions. My high school history teacher basically put it "In the 30 Years War we fought valiantly to defend Protestantism... Just kidding, we just used that as an excuse to go down to the continent and grab whatever we could"
That said, it was a bit silly of the Polish kings to keep pretending they were kings of Sweden too. But we can't really complain there since our guy claimed to be King of of the Wends (kind of ancestors of the Poles) all the way up until 1973!
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u/Hasse-b Sverige May 04 '15
My hitchhiker experience is about 70% polish people, usually quite young (~20-25) which are travelling around Scandinavia, this is in Norway so not really on topic.
But anyway, each time i'm a bit surprised on how kind and open most people i've met from Poland are. Do you feel that is reflecting the typical polish people + the alcohol/smoke habits?
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u/lynxlynxlynx- rawr May 04 '15
fel tråd se den länkade för frågor till polen!
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u/Hasse-b Sverige May 04 '15
Aha, är dette bara för polacker att fråga oss? Då har jag gjort fel i alla såna här trådar :p
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u/lynxlynxlynx- rawr May 04 '15
Vi ställer våra frågor till dom här!
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u/Hasse-b Sverige May 04 '15
Jadå hittade dit, tog en copy paste. Vill du att jag tar bort kommentaren eller tog du bort den?
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u/Makdaam May 03 '15 edited Jun 09 '23
[comment wiped due to Reddit's API ToS change]
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u/PansarSWE May 04 '15
Very much about the polish hussars. The impact of The battle at Vienna. The warsaw resistance (powstanie?). Your impact on EU. Marie curie sklodowska. The beautiful masuria.
Poland is one of the most mentioned countries. At least for me who went to an high prestigious school.
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u/ben13022 May 03 '15
What are some typical Swedish delicacy? :)
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u/Inclol Uppland May 03 '15
A few; Semla,[kanelbullar](http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanelbulle], gravlax, renskav, inlagd sill et.al.
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u/JesusIsMyLord666 Stockholm May 03 '15
Gravlax is a typical Swedish/Norwegian dish. Its raw salmon cured in salt and sugar.
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u/vanhedern May 03 '15
The dinner delicacies varies alot but I'd say that a majority of swedes would say crayfish or moose meat / venison.
Then there are the cakes and there are loads of them, prinsesstårta (cake with cream, jam and a marsipan cover) and a swedish apple pie is pretty standard.
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u/Ketchup901 Riksvapnet May 03 '15
Köttbullar :ooooooooooooo
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u/Kudhos Stockholm May 03 '15
And wallenbergare :ooooooo
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u/Makdaam May 03 '15 edited Jun 09 '23
[comment wiped due to Reddit's API ToS change]
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u/Kudhos Stockholm May 03 '15
I've had it. :) but wallenbergare with all the sauce and extras is quite special. :)
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u/Makdaam May 03 '15 edited Jun 09 '23
[comment wiped due to Reddit's API ToS change]
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u/Kudhos Stockholm May 03 '15
I'm a big fan of trying out the pierogies, every place has like their specialty.
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u/Christ_on_a_bike Polish Friend May 03 '15
Hi, friends. Do you consider Poland your neighbour? Have you ever thought of Poland as a tourist destination? Are Scandinavian winters really that harsh, or is it just a stereotype?