Sweden on vo.rs

The Systembolaget Rumours: The Poison That Wasn't in the Bottle

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Jokkmokk Winter Market: The Sámi Gathering Above the Arctic Circle

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Every year on the first Thursday of February, a town of a few thousand people north of the Arctic Circle swells to tens of thousands, in temperatures that regularly sit at minus thirty, because the Jokkmokk winter market has been the great gathering of the Sámi world since 1605 and four centuries of cold has never once been reason enough to cancel. This is Swedish Lapland — Sápmi, in the Sámi tongue, the land that stretches across the top of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia — and Jokkmokk’s market is its oldest continuous appointment.

Ubåtsjakten: The Submarines Sweden Hunted and Never Caught

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Kubb: The Viking Lawn Game With a World Championship on Gotland

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000

On the Swedish island of Gotland every August, hundreds of teams gather on mown grass to throw wooden sticks at other wooden sticks, and the last team standing is crowned world champion of kubb. It is the calmest, sunniest, most beer-friendly world championship I know, and I have made the trip across the Baltic to see it with my own eyes.

Kubb — pronounced roughly “koob” — is a Nordic lawn game, and the World Championship, the Kubb VM, has been held since 1995 in the village of Rone on Gotland’s southern half. That first year drew 28 teams, most of them local Gotlanders. It has grown into a genuinely international gathering since, hundreds of teams filling a field for a long August weekend, but it has kept the character of the first edition: relaxed, sunburnt, faintly ridiculous, and utterly charming.

The Palme Assassination: A Prime Minister, a Pistol, and No Answer

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 13:00:00 +0000

The Gävle Goat: Sweden's Giant Straw Goat and Its Yearly Arson Saga

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Every December a Swedish city builds a thirteen-metre goat out of straw, plants it in the main square, and then more or less holds its breath to see whether the thing survives to New Year. Most years it does not. The Gävle Goat is the strangest running gag in Scandinavia, a monument that exists partly to be admired and mostly, it seems, to be set on fire, and it has been playing out this way since 1966.

Sweden Rock 2018: My One Year in the Sölvesborg Forest

Sat, 09 Jun 2018 09:00:00 +0000