In our weekly column, The Local’s Nordic editor Richard Orange considers Swedish herd behaviour and looks back through the week’s coverage.
It’s the time of year where my feeds fill up with forest floors bursting with lance-shaped leaves and jars of oily, green paste. Down here in Skåne at least, the season of ramslök (ramsons or wild garlic) is upon us and everyone I know seems to be out picking it and pounding it into a zesty pesto.
Everyone, that is, except one. “I refuse ramslök,” declared my office mate. “I just get really annoyed about doing what everyone else is doing. I HAVE to be different.”
She certainly has a point, and I feel there is something particularly Swedish about this type of herd behaviour, at least within a certain portion of the middle-aged and nearly middle-aged middle classes. It’s the compulsion people have to share pictures of and go on incessantly about something that is essentially a solitary activity. There’s a similar situation with cold water swimming. (To adapt the old joke about vegans: “How do you know someone’s a cold water swimmer? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.”)
So I’m here to tell you that I, too, am one of the herd. I was out filling plastic bags with ramslök this week, have already made pesto and am planning a foragers’ take on Spanish tortilla. For me it’s one of the highlights of the year in Sweden, second-only to the month when the forests fill with porcini, chanterelles and brittlegill mushrooms. I took great pleasure in greeting the others rummaging between the trees in my local wood (I couldn’t resist starting by informing them with mock-officiousness that as it’s a national park, what they were doing is illegal, even though it’s actually allowed in this particular national park).
And yes, there’s something faintly ridiculous about all of us crouched in the same patches of woodland, clutching the same leaves, posting the same photos. But when there’s such a good reason to get out in the woods after being cooped up all winter, there are worse herds to be part of.
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Migration news
The Swedish parliament’s Social Insurance Committee held the first of three meetings preparing the upcoming stricter citizenship bill on Tuesday, with MPs from the Social Democrats and the Centre Party telling The Local the opposition was agreed on drawing up a joint reservation calling for transitional rules.
The Centre Party has filed an additional reservation calling for foreigners who pay more than half a million kronor in tax to have a shorter five-year residency requirement for citizenship.
We also broke down the key steps along the way to the citizenship bill coming into force, and explained how long you will need to have lived in Sweden to apply for citizenship after June 6th.
Finally, we published an opinion piece by one of our readers, Ramy E, who complained that by scrapping the easier citizenship-by-notification procedure for children from outside the Nordic countries, the bill sent a message that some children belong here less than others.
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It’s now nearly a month since the Migration Agency handed over its suggestions of which jobs should be exempted from the new higher minimum salary for work permits. Sofia Råsmar, international recruitment specialist for Visita, and Amelie Berg, labour market specialist at the Confederation of Swedish Industry, told us that the wait is making it harder for their members to recruit and plan.
Membership+ subscribers can listen to Berg criticise the new salary threshold in the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast.
The government has also been under fire from human rights groups for planning to add an “honest living” criteria to residency permit applications.
Following our live Q&A on the abolition of permanent residency last Friday, I interviewed three foreigners, one who was planning to apply for Long Term Resident status, and two who already have it. I wanted to underline that while it’s mostly people who got asylum in Sweden who are affected, it also affects some high-skilled workers and their families.
In this week’s podcast: you can hear editor Emma Löfgren and our reporter Mandy Pipher further discuss the government’s moves to phase out permanent residency for most immigrants.
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What else have we been writing about?
The big news this week was Sweden’s spring amendment budget. We broke down the main new spending items and explained what changes would have the most impact on foreigners.
In politics, a new report found that laws proposed by the current government have been more heavily and frequently criticised by the Council on Legislation than any government in the past two decades.
The government has also frequently ignored the legal watchdog, whose rulings are only advisory, as it did again on Thursday when it submitted a bill to parliament which will allow jailing 13-year-olds.
Has there been a reprieve for Sweden’s ailing green transition? A consortium of investors, led by the Wallenberg family, have agreed to put 1.4 billion kronor into the Swedish green steel startup Stegra.
Sweden’s minister of civil defence, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, told a press conference that a heating facility in western Sweden was subjected to an attempted “destructive attack” by a pro-Russian activist group in the spring of 2025.
Finally, if you’ve ever caught a stranger in Sweden staring at you, only for them to look away when you return the look with a smile, know that you are not alone. Mandy Pipher explained in this article why this Swedish behaviour trait is actually a form of politeness.
That’s that for now! I’m going to spend the day trying to force my long-suffering children out into the woods to pick ramslök.
Cheers,
Richard
Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members that gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to your inbox, by going to your newsletter preferences.