Talk:Sweden

Ethnic Groups

The article states that 6.2% of the population is of another ethnic group than Swedish, though in the source referred to, (http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____26041.aspx) it states that in reality, 14.7 are foreign born, and a total of 19.1% is either born out of Sweden or has both parents born out of Sweden. The 6.2% to in the article represents the number of people living in Sweden who has not yet retained citizenship, but not the number of people of non-Swedish ethincity. According to Wikipedias own article about Swedes as an ethnic group, 7.712.376 people in the world are of Swedish ethnicity, which accounts for 81.9% of the total population of Sweden. Hence, the number 6.2% referred to for non-ethnic Swede's is by all means proven incorrect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.209.178.243 (talk) 00:23, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree, the ethnic group section is plainly wrong. SCB clearly states that 20 % of the population is made up by other ethnicities, yet it is stated on the wiki that Swedes make up 90 % of the population. This should be changed asap. --94.255.146.60 (talk) 21:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Swedes do not make up 90% of the population, that information is clearly wrong. Hurry up and change it... Mno001 (talk) 14:55, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Can't find that. Where is it? SergeWoodzing (talk) 13:29, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

http://www.scb.se/Pages/Product____25785.aspx?produktkod=BE0101&displaypressrelease=true&pressreleaseid=257212, you even have it as a source. It clearly states that foreign born population is about 14% and with Swedish-born people having both parents being from other countries included it makes 18%. Just to further clarify this, on the wiki-page about Swedes it says that about 7.7 million Swedes live in Sweden. Which would be about 82.7% of the current population. More in line with the actual figure that is not represented on this page... Mno001 (talk) 10:18, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest we avoid making claims about ethnic groups in the country, considering that the government publishes no such statistics. Additionally, I can't find any secondary sources (e.g. CIA World Factbook) that include any figures. I think it would be more responsible to leave it unspecified than present questionable numbers. CaseyPenk (talk) 06:28, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Also see Talk:Swedes#Number of Swedes in Sweden for a similar discussion. CaseyPenk (talk) 06:30, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

The numbers as they are right now are far more misleading than they were before. Why was it changed to 90% instead of 80%? It's true that there are no statistics on ethnicity, so why even have those kind of numbers on here? Nothing can be verified. Mno001 (talk) 12:51, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

How is it that nothing happens to this particular statistic? The topic was raised in November of 2011 but on the page nothing changes. It is clear beyond any doubt that the information about ethnicity, in the form currently displayed, is false! Either the information should be corrected to represent fact or it should be removed in its entirety. If publishing erroneous information is the object of Wikipedia, why not state that the group “ethnic swedes” constitute 10% of the population? It would be equally false but at least it would correct itself over time.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.156.44.178 (talk) 13:30, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I suggest we !vote on this topic so we can get a degree of consensus. I propose that we remove the statistics on ethnicity. Personally, I would prefer having no statistics on this particular issue to having misleading ones. I'm also open to the idea of adding nationality or country of origin information, because the Swedish government actually publishes statistics to that effect. CaseyPenk (talk) 14:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

It is unfair to hide this statistical and official estimation to the Swedish people and the world.It is clear that some group of people want to use hide information for their political personal views. The numbers must be changed to 80%. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.91.202.88 (talk) 21:13, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The Ethnic Swedish population is at 78% and decreasing every year because of mass immigration in Sweden. To hide this fact is to hide the reality of the country. http://affes.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/nordisk-bakgrund-i-sverige-1900-2010/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anton88be (talk • contribs) 13:42, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Since there are no official statistics on ethnicity i will remove the statistics. SCB is a reliable source but they don't record ethnicity, only nationality, country of birth and country of birth of the parents. Of course, if anyone can find a reliable source for at least the percentage of ethnic Swedes, that figure is obviously relevant for the infobox.Sjö (talk) 08:09, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, as far as I can see the table in the ref doesn't support the 78 % ethnic Swedes. The closest I find is the 19.6 % "Proportion foreign background in %" which would mean 80.4 % Swedes if we assume that the rest are Swedes.Sjö (talk) 17:43, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Dear Sjö (talk) , the stats may not be perfect but it gives a good idea on the current demographics of Sweden. Also there has never been more than 4% of non nordic foreigners in Sweden before 1961. 20% of people with foreign background means that there is 80% that have no foreign background.

I accept your arguments but you must accept mine. Lets say 80% of Swedes with no foreign background. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anton88be (talk • contribs) 05:23, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

By all means, do present the available statistics on foreign background. But don't call this ethnicity, because that is something else. For example, the Sami population is a different ethnicity than the Swedish, yet it has no foreign background, but is native to the country. An interesting document (if you read Swedish) is MIS 2002:3 Personer med utländsk bakgrund, Riktlinjer för redovisning i statistiken (pages 19-20) in the series Meddelanden i samordningsfrågor för Sveriges officiella statistik (MIS). --LA2 (talk) 20:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

"Ethnicity" of Swedes in a genetic sense is very illusive to discuss due to all the large demographic changes in the past (Finns, Belgians, Germans, Scottish settling in different areas). A huge percentage of the population, while having grown up in Sweden, have a partially Finnish background and yet nobody perceives them as a different ethnicity anymore. "Ethnicity" may also be interpreted in a cultural sense. Still the problem of line-drawing remains. For instance, Norwegians speak a language that is mutually intelligible with Swedish. They have almost exactly the same culture and values. Is a child of a Swedish mother and a Norwegian father of a partially different ethnicity? A "yes" would be completely rediculous. We could perhaps speak of a Scandinavian-Germanic or North-Germanic ethnicity, summing up Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders and Foroese as an ensemble of peoples with a largely common cultural background. While neglecting a few extreme areas, most people of foreign background who were born in Sweden or arrived there at a young age have largely assimilated the local behaviour and values, even though they have foreign parents. Thus it is not relevant to consider them as a different ethnicity in the cultural sense anymore. Because of all these reasons, stating numbers regarding ethnicity is rediculous. The only factual, indisputable number that we can give is the one based on place of birth. According to Eurostat, that would be 14.3 %. Thus 85.7 % of the population in Sweden are Swedes. (Jonas Henriksson (talk) 17:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC))

I think you exaggerate the impact of the small amount of immigration that happened prior to modern times. Most of us are likely to have some foreign heritage, but that that will still be just a drop in a deep sea. I for instance have forest Finns in my lineage 300 years back in time, but that only make me 1/216 Finnish. Anyway, it is better to provide no information over disinformation, as we don't really know how many people consider themselves Swedish. --94.255.146.227 (talk) 02:23, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

If you read the swedish wikipedia's article on the history of Gothenburg, you will find that a very large percentage of the population of Gothenburg during the years that followed the city's founding came from Scotland, Germany and the Netherlands. The scottish influence is the reason to why the name "Glenn" persists in Western Sweden. You would find a similar relation between Stockholm+Uppsala and Germans. At one point, 40 % of the population in Uppsala had German names. What we can conclude is that the cities at the time of their founding had significant immigration. Subsequent urbanization of rural people must have lead to a dilution of that, as you say, but with such a sparesly populated country, could it really be as a drop in the deep sea? Two rivers joining would be a more suitable analogy. Moreover, the older story is not concluded. Recent findings show that the people who brought agriculture to Sweden came from the Mediterranean (http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-swedish-farmer-came-from-the-mediterranean-1.10541) and were genetically similar to today's Cypriots and Sardinians. That was 6000 years ago, which is a very short time in genetics. (Jonas Henriksson (talk) 10:21, 2 March 2013 (UTC))

You are talking about times when the urban population was a very minor part of a country's total population. According to genetic studies that I've read (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022547), Swedes are fairly homogeneous compared to other European peoples. Besides, migrations that happened prior to there even being differences amongst the Indo-European branch of people are not very relevant to the definition of the modern Swedish ethnicity. --94.255.146.227 (talk) 07:16, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

It is true that the urbanites were a minority at the time. But do you know to what extent? The rural population of Sweden at the time was not very large neither. The total population of Sweden at the peak of its imperial period was estimated to 2.5 million people, thus the population in Sweden proper was even smaller. The statement you made is not actually strengthened by the article you refer to. You said that Swedes are fairly homogeneous compared to other European people, but actually the article states that Northern Swedes (who have always been a minority) are genetically inhomogeneous and they differ from Southern Swedes (who have always been in majority) who are genetically homogeneous. It is also explained that people in the state of Utah (who have mainly British, Scandinavian and German ancestry) differ very little genetically from Southern Swedes. That mainly shows that Southern Swedes fit together closely with other groups of germanic language speakers. It is the Northern Swedes, the minority, that are the differing group. The article also argues that continental Europeans and Britons must have migrated to Southern Sweden, explaining the genetic composition of the people living there today. The conclusion is thus that the Southern Swedes are homogeneous with (not "compared to", of that there is no mention) other European people. Furthermore, the expansion of agriculture predates the expansion of the Indo-European languages by a couple of thousand years, depending on the region. You cannot make a statement about the definition of any European ethnicity without taking into account how they came to be. The migrations bringing agriculture as well as the migrations bringing in indo-european languages were clearly relevant in the forming of the Swedish ethnicity, as it is relevant to the formation of Spanish, Italian, Russian, German or any other European ethnicities. An alternative image would be that the Swedes descend from the hunter-gatherer bands that arrived after the end of the last glacial period. The truth is that this group mixed with a number of other later arriving groups and that the same story is likely to apply for almost all of Europe. (Jonas Henriksson (talk) 16:04, 3 March 2013 (UTC))

I need to correct you, the article states that northern Norrland is inhomogeneous, but that part of the country is home to about 200 000 people of which many belong to national minorities such as Sami and Finns. Further more, the difference between northerners and southerners claiming to be Swedes is negligible, and it cleraly states that Swedes are fairly homogeneous in a global perspective even if local variations exist (http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0016747.t002&representation=PNG_M). And I do have a source on the number of people living in towns at the times you speak of; "Sverige hade en liten stadsbefolkning. Bara några få procent av befolkningen levde i städer under medeltiden. De flesta städerna var små och får närmast ses som ett slags förtätad landsbygd. Inte ens Stockholm, den största staden, hade mer än cirka 6000 invånare vid medeltidens slut" -Sverige - en social och ekonomisk historia. Hedenborg, Morell. 2006, sida 37. And no, a migration and melting pot event that happened 5000 years ago is not relevant to this discussion, as we are discussing a state that has existed for 1000 years and a people that may have existed and shared a common identity for an additional 500 or 1000 years.

But to be blunt, there are two ways to conclude the number of Swedes in Sweden (% of people identifying themselves as part of a Swedish identity or % as being part of a Swedish ethnicity), both of which requires surveys of some kind. We have access to no such information, and an estimation can thus not be done. You can't just remove the percentage of people with an immigrant background as that doesn't take into account the identity of people not born to immigrants or the fact that people "immigrating" back to Sweden may be Swedes --94.255.146.227 (talk) 11:39, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Edit request: found the missing citation, 25 July 2011

I found the citation that is missing under the education section, 3rd paragraph, in the part that talks about tertiary education:

https://www.tilastokeskus.fi/artikkelit/2006/art_2006-07-06_001.html

I found this citation source in the article about Finland, which discussed a similar set of statistics about its own tertiary education system.

Thanks!

Payment in Sweden soon without notes

Croatian writer Giancarlo Kravar: Sweden was the first European country to introduce bills 1661st year, and probably will be the first and out of use. Banknotes and coins have a percentage of only three percent of payments in the Swedish economy, and even the donations received for the church with the help of credit card or SMS. Neither public transport in Sweden can no longer pay cash. 93.137.42.94 (talk) 05:21, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Lisbeth Salander not Pippi Longstocking

Under Literature, it is stated that Larsson based Lisbeth Salander on Longstocking. This is not entirely true and it certainly doesn't say this in the article (which is a dead link, btw). He was influenced by the character. Not sure how to resolve this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sabbersolo (talk • contribs) 11:41, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

A new online source should be found, unless a statement to that effect can found in print. The question whether the inspiration of Larsson should be characterized as "based on" or "influenced by" (and the nuances of the wording) should be determined alone on what is in the source.

Apart from all that, I question the need to dig any deeper into this subject on the Sweden mainpage as there are several other articles in which this particular topic can be more relevantly raised. RicJac (talk) 07:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Parliament of Sweden, or Riksdag of Sweden?

Please make your views known in this discussion on: Talk:Parliament of Sweden#Requested move .282012.29. RicJac (talk) 07:47, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Population census 2012

The currently displayed population census of 2012 was an estimate. The SCB published the actual census a few days ago. The number was 9,555,893. Currently 9,540,065 is displayed and this needs to be changed as the estimation was too low by quite a lot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonas Henriksson (talk • contribs) 11:57, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

 Done Vacation9 22:31, 22 February 2013 (UTC)