Salon.com > Sweden

Europe’s latest food scare: Toxic salmon

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Horsemeat could seem downright appetizing to European consumers compared to what might be in their fish.

Specifically, we're talking salmon caught in the Baltic Sea. The EU banned the export of Baltic salmon from Sweden back in 2002 due to the fact that they were found to be heavily contaminated with dioxins.

But that didn’t stop Swedish firms from selling 200 tons of the fish to companies in France, Denmark and the Netherlands.

A French firm that bought 103 tons of the Baltic salmon in 2011 and 2012 said they did their own tests which did not reveal dioxins in the fish.

"Nobody told us it was illegal," chief executive Francois Agussol told AFP.

Swedish television welcomes Amy Poehler with new comedy series

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:32:00 +0000

American national treasure Amy Poehler is spreading some of her charm and wit to Sweden with a new comedy series called "Welcome to Sweden." Poehler is producing the series with her brother, Greg Poehler, under their new production company, Syskon (which means "sibling" in Swedish).

“I’m so happy to work with my talented brother Greg and the terrific Swedish actors who have joined us,” Amy Poehler said in a press release. “Hopefully this helps us decide once and for all who is our parents’ favorite child.”

The show, based on Greg Poehler's real-life romance, will be TV4's first English-language comedy. Details from the Hollywood Reporter:

Swedish high school institutes gender-neutral changing room

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:07:00 +0000

Sweden recently introduced the gender-neutral pronoun "hen" into official usage, scandalized the international community by suggesting that Spider-Man-loving little kids could push around baby carriages for fun, and now, the country is home to a gender-free changing space for high school students.

How dare they!

Patrik Biverstedt, headmaster of the Soedra Latins upper secondary school in Sodermalm, told the Associated Press that the school introduced the neutral changing room at the behest of the students, who suggested it last year.

World’s first permanent ABBA museum to open in Sweden

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:50:00 +0000

ABBA may never regroup, but in recent years fans have reconnected with the pop group through a Broadway musical, movies and a traveling exhibition. Come May 7, fans will be able to enjoy a permanent museum dedicated to the 70s band in Stockholm, Sweden.

Museum director Mattias Hansson tells AFP that “we’re going to offer visitors a unique experience."

Organic Eden Foods’ quiet right-wing agenda

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:45:00 +0000

The slogan for Eden Foods, which describes itself as the "oldest natural and organic food company in North America," is "creation and maintenance of purity in food." Its CEO and founder, Michael Potter, has been prominent in debates over labeling of organic food and GMOs. But the company has been quietly seeking in court another form of purity -- to Catholic doctrine about sex being solely for procreation. That goes not just for Potter, but for all 128 of his employees.

That is, Eden Foods -- an organic food company with no shortage of liberal customers -- has quietly pursued a decidedly right-wing agenda, suing the Obama administration for exemption from the mandate to cover contraception for its employees under the Affordable Care Act. In court filings, Eden Foods, represented by the conservative Thomas More Law Center, alleges that its rights have been violated under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Sweden is totally down with gay athletes

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:56:00 +0000

Sweden. Wonderful Sweden.

The country always places in the top 10 of the world happiness index, has an expansive social welfare system, mandatory recycling and fika! And now, they have a cellphone commercial that casually addresses gay rights in professional sports.

Besides being overrun with lawmakers intent on eliminating our country's social safety net and an athletic culture with a dubious record on welcoming gay players, here in the United States our mobile ads just feature talking unibrows.

Sweden has shown us up again, it seems.

Google tells Sweden that “ungoogleable” is not a word

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:20:00 +0000

In 2002, "google" was so entrenched in our vernacular that it became the "most useful word," according to the American Dialect Society. In 2006, it was awarded entry into the Oxford English and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionaries, elevating the neologism to a formally recognized word that became an eponym for Internet search.

It was only a matter of time, then, that someone would try to push "ungoogleable" as a word (though really, is there such a thing?). The Swedish Language Council tried to do just that when it created its annual list of "top 10 new words which have become popular in Sweden to show how society and language are changing," according to the BBC. The council defined "ungoogleable" ("ogooglebar" in Swedish) as anything that cannot be found by using a search engine.

But Google has historically taken issue with generalized uses of the term, citing trademark concerns and arguing that the term "google" should only describe instances in which the Google search engine is used.

Ingmar Bergman, novelist

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 19:00:00 +0000

A personal anecdote, if you’ll permit me: during one point in my college years, I was deemed angst-ridden enough to warrant not only twice-a-week therapy sessions, but also attendance at a weekly group for people similarly angst-ridden. It was during this period—and this is certainly unfortunate timing—that I watched Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film Persona, the haunting tale of a cheerful nurse, played by Bibi Andersson, and her selectively mute ward, played by Liv Ullman, whose personalities begin to blend together in sinister, mysterious ways. I was just as captivated by the stark cinematography of Bergman’s longtime collaborator, Sven Nykvist, as I was by the existential struggle of Ullman’s character, an actress who has lost her luster for role-playing on stage and in life. It seemed as if a speech delivered by a psychiatrist early in the film (which contains such maudlin gems as “The hopeless dream of being—not seeming, but being”) was somehow meant just for me. I regaled the other group members with the lessons I had learned from watching the movie, using Bergman’s bleak rationales as a counter-argument to the group therapist’s insistence that we all try to lead happier, more productive lives. A few days later, my individual psychologist told me that the group therapist had called her because she was “concerned” about me.

Ladies, Uncle Sam needs your uterus!

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Ladies of America, are you suffering from "late-modern exhaustion"? Have you been selfishly "shrugging off the basic sacrifices" of your patriotic childbearing duties, by which we mean sacrificing your own goals and aspirations? And more to the point, do you really need better access to affordable birth control and abortion when your "decadence" is already so efficiently bringing down American society?

Of course, when New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat filed his Sunday column warning of the coming American demographic winter, he was too smart to so openly blame women's choices and feminism that way, or talk about women much at all. He knows the audience he's trying to persuade, which doesn't openly blame such things but does worry, in polite terms, about the U.S.'s toppling from its "global perch."

“The Stockholm Octavo”: Powdered wigs, poisoned fans and a lively deck of cards

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Karen Engelmann's "The Stockholm Octavo" is a bonbon box filled with treats designed to appeal to lovers of literary historical thrillers. The setting is late-18th-century Stockholm under the cultured King Gustav III, so in addition to the wintery mystique of that city, you will also find powdered wigs and elaborate court gowns in myriad colors of satin. There is conspiracy, specifically that among the Swedish nobility who resent Gustav's efforts to transfer some power and rights to the commons; there is a rakish demimonde of professional gamblers, showfolk and brothel-keepers; and there is a whiff of the supernatural, as the characters practice the form of cartomancy — divination by cards — that gives the novel its title.

The main character is Emil Larsson, a self-described man of "the Town," as the people in the book invariably refer to Stockholm. A hustler who has clambered his way into the ideal civil service job (he's a sort of undercover customs agent whose work consists of hanging out in taverns and coffee shops hunting smugglers), Emil believes it is in his interest "professionally and personally to be utterly forgettable — escaping entanglements, obligations and occasionally revenge." He has one friend, Mrs. Sparrow, an older woman who runs an exclusive gaming establishment and with whom he often serves as a partner in the popular game known as Boston whist.

The Pirate Bay becomes raid-proof

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:47:00 +0000

Popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay bills itself as "the world's most resilient" site of its kind. As a top facilitator of illegal downloading around the planet, The Pirate Bay has, since its inception in 2003, taken pains to conceal the location of its servers from the authorities.

Now, according to TorrentFreak.com, TPB has headed for "the cloud" -- all its servers will now be virtually hosted, without the need for any persisting physical server locations.

“Moving to the cloud lets [The Pirate Bay] move from country to country, crossing borders seamlessly without downtime. All the servers don’t even have to be hosted with the same provider, or even on the same continent,” The Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak. "If the police decide to raid us again there are no servers to take," the site said, explaining that hosting content virtually leaves little to be taken in a raid.

The Pirate Bay was raided once before in 2006 in Sweden (where the site originates from). Police took all the site's servers at the time, but it was still back online and more popular than ever within three days. According to Torrent Freak, the site's move to the cloud may have been prompted by rumors that another police raid was imminent in Sweden. The powerful Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have long pressured authorities to crackdown on the site, which, since moving to the cloud, boasts the epithet "the galaxy's most resilient bit torrent site."

Chinese writer Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize for literature

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:34:00 +0000

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Chinese writer Mo Yan has been named the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.

The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the prestigious award, in Thursday praised Mo's "hallucinatory realism," saying it "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."

European authors had won four of the past five awards, with last year's prize going to Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer.

As with the other Nobel Prizes, the prize is worth 8 million kronor, or about $1.2 million.

Britain’s Assange overreach

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:35:00 +0000

The prosecution of Julian Assange has taken a comically dark twist now that the British government has threatened to storm the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has sought asylum. Contrary to popular belief, Julian Assange is not a criminal. He has not been charged with or convicted of any crime, nor is he wanted in any country on criminal charges. If the U.K. does raid the Ecuadorean embassy, legally the territory of that country, it will be breaking the law and exposing the fundamental hypocrisy of its claims about the respect of the rule of law internationally.

Not Running From the Law