Swedish News:

First Swedish grown strawberries. Emigration/immigration. Goodies for Easter. 

  • The first Swedish strawberries of the year - for sale for $26 a box.

  • First strawberries
    First Swedish strawberries, that is. There was a promise there would be Swedish strawberries available in time for Easter, and sure enough here they are! To the tune of 175 SEK ($26) the first little square paper box of Swedish gold was sold last week. The berries came from a greenhouse north of Helsingborg.

  • Easter in Sweden means a time full of food: Pickled herring, potatoes, and of course eggs. It is the third of the most important weeks for food retailers, the most important ones being Christmas and Midsummer. Photo: Per Ola Wiberg

  • Emigration/immigration
    Last year, 50,600 people from Sweden emigrated. Meanwhile, the number of immigrants in Sweden was higher than ever before with closer to 115,800 people.

  • 50,600 people left Sweden last year, and 115,800 came.

  • Goodies for Easter
    Swedish stores are stocking up on eggs, herring, ”påskmust” and other essentials for the Easter week, and Svensk Handel predicts Swedes will spend billions on food for Easter. Easter counts as a real ”food” holiday, and after Christmas and Midsummer, it is one of the year’s most intense weeks for food retailers. This year’s forecast for Easter lies at little over 7 billion SEK ($1 billion), around 20% more than during a ”normal” week, which trades about 5.8 billion ($8.8 million). The prognosis could’ve been higher, but this year Easter falls shortly before most workers receive their salaries.

  • This year’s Birgit Nilsson Prize goes to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra because of its ”extraordinary contributions during its 172 years of work in opera and concert.”

  • Few things are more telling of summer (or, sometimes spring) than 'jordgubbar' and, "only Sweden has Swedish strawberries..."