The global Children project

About the country…

Sweden is a large country by surface almost 450 000 square kilometers, but a very small country in habitants. Only 10 million people lives in Sweden. In the metropolitan area of Stockholm, the capital, live 2 million persons. People lived here already in the Stone Age and Stockholm was built on the remains of a Viking city.

In Sweden we have a royal family with king, queen, princesses and a prince. We had kings and queens for more than 500 years but they do not rule the country anymore. Now we have democracy with elections.

Sweden is located in the north of our world close to the North pole. This means that we have different seasons. Winter with darkness and snow, freezing cold, but great fun with outdoor sports and cosy fires and candles inside. Spring with snow and then the green, when the whole nature is waking up as the sun comes back from a long winter. Summer with warmth and flower and lots of light. We swim and spend time outdoors. The we have autumn, more chilly, fantastic colors of the trees just before the leaves come off.

Since we have so little of the sun, we celebrate the longest and brightest day in the summer – Midsummer. That day the sun almost never sets. It never gets really dark. We sing and dance all day and all night round a flowery pole. People are happy and all over the country a big party is going on.

In Sweden we have many lakes and rivers and creeks. We also have archipelagoes on the west and the east coast. There are more than 100 000 islands here – and some with no houses and some with lots of houses and fishermen. We also have mountains, but not as high as they used to be since the big land ice worn them down some 10 000 years ago.

The biggest lake is Vänern. The highest mountain is Kebnekaise. It measures 2097 meters. The longest river is Klarälven.

Sweden has many different people, talking different languages, but Swedish is the only official one. We also have all religions. In Sweden there live Muslims, Jews and Roman Catholics. However Lutheran Christianity is the largest religion, but most do not practice it. We only go to church to celebrate special occasions like weddings, funerals and christening. The most Christian thing we do is to celebrate Christmas – but today that is more about family gathering and Santa than Christ, I think.