Sweden at a Glance

• Population: approx. 9 million


• Capital city: Stockholm, 771,000 inhabitants


• Language: Swedish


• Religions: majoritarian Protestants


• Form of government: Constitutional Monarchy

Economy

In foreign trade, Germany is the second-largest buyer of Swedish exports after the US, accounting for one tenth of total exports, and is by far the most important supplier of Swedish imports, accounting for nearly one fifth (2003: 18.8%) of the country’s total imports.

There are some 600 German businesses active in Sweden (subsidiaries, participations, branches and offices), with a total workforce of approx. 100,000 and an annual turnover of EUR 30 billion. German companies tend to be concentrated in the Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö/Helsingburg regions. Sweden, for its part, has some 700 companies operating in Germany, with a total workforce of approx. 144,000 and an annual turnover of EUR 38 billion. The main business concentrations are in and around Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin.

Culture and Science

Cultural relations between Germany and Sweden are traditionally close. While Sweden had previously looked to Germany culturally, after 1945 it quickly shifted its focus to the Anglo-Saxon world with English replacing German as the most widely spoken foreign language. Today 99% of students in Swedish schools are required to take English as their first foreign language. German is still the most popular second foreign language, but it is increasingly vying with Spanish for second place.

The Goethe Institute, which has a branch in Stockholm, is the main mediator of German cultural policy in Sweden. In its language work, it focuses in particular on the further training of teachers in a nationwide programme. The Stockholm German School enjoys an excellent reputation with the Swedish public.

There has been a recent revival of interest in German films in Sweden, some of them ("Goodbye Lenin", "Nowhere in Africa", "The Downfall") becoming box-office successes. Overall, though, the popularity of German cinema and TV films is limited in Sweden owing to the dominant influence of Anglo-Saxon culture. In the area of music and theatre, there are regular guest performances by German artists in Sweden and vice versa, mainly on a commercial basis. At grass-roots level, however, there is a quite lively exchange between clubs, municipalities and schools on both sides. Contemporary German literature has a hard time in Sweden, with only a few authors enjoying any degree of popularity, but there is considerable interest in classical German literature. By contrast, Swedish authors have long been established in the German literary market, some of them enjoying their greatest success in Germany.

To foster cultural relations between the two countries, Sweden has launched the Road to Sweden project (www.schwedenstrasse.de), which is supported by local partners and has led to a multitude of small-scale projects in the parts of Germany that once belonged to Sweden (particularly Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania).

Links

www.schweden.org (Official Representation of Sweden in Germany)
www.stockholm.diplo.de (German Embassy in Sweden)
www.handelskammer.se (German-Swedish Chamber of Commerce)
www.goethe.de/stockholm (Goethe Institute in Stockholm)