A simple dinner in Sweden somehow came to $35—just an entrée and a cola. On December 5, 2020, it felt like one more small surprise worth writing down. I didn’t know then how much those notes would come to mean years later.
The Basics
Sweden runs on the krona, not the euro — it joined the EU in 1995 but kept its own currency. Nearly everyone speaks English, and cards are accepted practically everywhere.
Population
Sweden has 10.2 million people as of 2020, and it doesn't feel like it. The restaurants, the malls, even Stockholm itself all run smaller than you'd expect.
Maybe it's the winter talking, but I chalk it up to the short days and the cold. Even Uppsala, the fourth-largest city, walks end to end in an afternoon.
The three biggest cities:
- Stockholm — 910,000 people, and roughly ⅓ of the country's GDP
- Gothenburg — 581,000
- Malmö — 316,000
Prices
Stockholm is one of the most expensive places I've ever lived. That $35 dinner up top would run about $20 back in the U.S. — and the gap shows up everywhere, not just in restaurants.
Internet
The most popular broadband provider is Com Hem — lease an apartment through Airbnb and odds are that's your connection. I'd never heard of it before moving here.
Internet companies Sweden gave the world:
- Spotify
- Ericsson — the 5G network provider
- Truecaller
- Detectify
Major hosting providers, if you ever need a Swedish server:
- Loopia — the biggest by far, based about an hour west of Stockholm
- Binero
- GleSYS
- Oderland
- Levonline
- FSdata
- Miss Hosting
- Bahnhof
Business
Every company name here ends in AB — Spotify AB, and so on. It's roughly Sweden's version of Inc. or LLC, though we're not being lawyerly about it.
Aktiebolag (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈâktsɪɛbʊˌlɑːɡ], “stock company”) is the Swedish term for “limited company” or “corporation”. When used in company names, it is abbreviated AB (in Sweden), Ab (in Finland), or A/B (for some older companies), roughly equivalent to the abbreviations Ltd and PLC.
Source: Wikipedia
Food
Menus repeat themselves here, in a good way. These are the staples you'll keep seeing:
- Salmon
- Herring in mustard sauce
- Meatballs — fine, but try them once and you're good, trust me
- Lingonberries — like a raspberry crossed with a cranberry
- Cracker bread
- Swedish pastries — the cinnamon rolls are amazing; the coffee next to them is another story
- Blood pudding
- Potatoes — the small Swedish kind
For the plate-by-plate tour, see what Swedes actually eat. There's more on the coffee situation in Swedish coffee culture.
Swedish candy deserves its own mention — any 7-Eleven or grocery store stocks dozens of varieties. It's one of my favorite things about the country.
Interesting Facts About Sweden
These came from my own Googling when I first got curious about the country:
- Sweden is the only country in the world where donations total more than 1% of GDP.
- 86% of Swedes live in cities.
- The standard work week is 40 hours, and the minimum paid holiday allowance is 5 weeks.
- Only 1% of waste ends up in landfills — 50% is recycled or composted, and 49% is incinerated for energy.
- Julmust (Christmas) and Påskmust (Easter) are the same drink in a different bottle.
- Sverige, the modern Swedish name for Sweden, literally means "Our kingdom."
- With a tax rate of 51.4% of GDP, Swedes are among the most highly taxed populations in the world.
- In 2012, Swedish dads took about 24% of the total parental leave.
The Unwritten Rules of Sweden (Video)
Still curious? The video below covers the side of Sweden the numbers miss — queueing, silence, and personal space, explained by a Swede in three minutes.
Budget for the prices, pack for the dark — and start with the candy aisle.