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original name Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte

French Revolutionary general and marshal of France (1804), who was elected crown prince of Sweden (1810), becoming regent and then king of Sweden and Norway (1818–44).

formed Swedish alliances with Russia, Great Britain, and Prussia, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig (1813)

In the seventeenth century, under a succession of outstandingly able soldier kings, Sweden had been a great power but after the death in 1718 of Karl XII, the last and most monomaniacal of the line, the country had become a by-word for weak government, corruption and impotence. Gustav III set himself the task of making Sweden great again. He was assassinated in March 1792 – the third Swedish monarch in 160 years to die of gunshot wounds

Under Karl XII’s successors, his central-German brother-in-law Fredrik I and his north-German second-cousin-once-removed Adolf Fredrik (Prince Bishop of Lubeck before the Swedish Riksdag chose him to be Fredrik’s heir) the country passed through the so-called Age of Liberty

When, shortly after his father’s death in February 1771, Gustav III met his uncle Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great), the latter sneered, ‘If there were Swedes in Sweden they would soon agree to bury their differences; but foreign corruption has so perverted the national spirit that harmony was impossible’. Gustav’s new kingdom was then the second largest in Europe after Russia. It comprised present-day Finland as well as Sweden, and a toe-hold in Germany in northern Pomerania.

king of Poland (1587–1632) and of Sweden (1592–99)

sought to effect a permanent union of Poland and Sweden but instead created hostile relations and wars between the two states lasting until 1660

The elder son of King John III Vasa of Sweden and Catherine, daughter of Sigismund I the Old of Poland, Sigismund belonged to the Vasa dynasty through his father and to the Jagiellon dynasty through his mother, who brought him up as a Catholic. He was elected king of Poland in August 1587, succeeding his uncle King Stephen Báthory.

It’s not true that Sweden offers an escape from the public health catastrophe. I only wish it did. But, and this is when conservative commentators, politicians and conspiracy theorists look away, Sweden offers an escape from the social catastrophe now engulfing us.

You never hear the Telegraph or the Mail say that we need Swedish levels of sickness benefit to ensure that carriers stay at home and quarantine

Or Swedish levels of housing benefit to ensure that they aren’t evicted from those same homes

“It’s the Swedish trust in government,” says Elias Billman, 22. “No one told me you have to stay home right now,” agrees his friend, Fredrik Glückman, a history student at Lund University. “We’re not in quarantine. And as soon as we hear from our government that we have to stay in, like you do in Britain, then we will do it.”

While every other country in Europe has been ordered into ever more stringent coronavirus lockdown, Sweden has remained the exception. Schools, kindergartens, bars, restaurants, ski resorts, sports clubs, hairdressers: all remain open, weeks after everything closed down in next door Denmark and Norway.

Universities have been closed, and on Friday, the government tightened the ban on events to limit them to no more than 50 people. But if you develop symptoms, you can still go back to work or school just two days after you feel better. If a parent starts showing symptoms, they’re allowed to continue to send their children to school.

Though a majority of nations have opted to pull the lever and shift tracks to a lockdown strategy, thereby sacrificing economic growth, Sweden has continued on the same line.

the Swedish government’s decision not to pull the lever and pursue a low-death approach has taken them into a tunnel.

We don’t know how long that immune response lasts.

Sweden’s grim result — more death, and nearly equal economic damage — suggests that the supposed choice between lives and paychecks is a false one: A failure to impose social distancing can cost lives and jobs at the same time.

Sweden put stock in the sensibility of its people as it largely avoided imposing government prohibitions. The government allowed restaurants, gyms, shops, playgrounds and most schools to remain open. By contrast, Denmark and Norway opted for strict quarantines, banning large groups and locking down shops and restaurants.

More than three months later, the coronavirus is blamed for 5,420 deaths in Sweden, according to the World Health Organization. That might not sound especially horrendous compared with the more than 129,000 Americans who have died. But Sweden is a country of only 10 million people. Per million people, Sweden has suffered 40 percent more deaths than the United States, 12 times more than Norway, seven times more than Finland and six times more than Denmark.

virtual ruler of Sweden

Charles in 1568 was one of the leaders of a rebellion against the rule of his half brother Erik XIV that placed his other brother on the throne as John III.

The brothers were reunited in 1587, however, when both opposed the nobles’ state council, which promoted the candidacy of John’s son Sigismund (king of Poland as Sigismund III Vasa) for the Polish throne.

made it a major European power

Gustav was the eldest son of Charles IX and his second wife, Christina of Holstein.

Charles IX had usurped the throne, having ejected his nephew Sigismund III Vasa (who was also king of Poland) in 1599, and the resulting dynastic quarrel involved Sweden and Poland in a war that continued intermittently for 60 years.

Charles XII, (born June 17, 1682, Stockholm—died Nov. 30, 1718, Fredrikshald, Nor.), king of Sweden (1697–1718), an absolute monarch who defended his country for 18 years during the Great Northern War and promoted significant domestic reforms. He launched a disastrous invasion of Russia (1707–09), resulting in the complete collapse of the Swedish armies and the loss of Sweden’s status as a great power. He was, however, also a ruler of the early Enlightenment era, promoting domestic reforms of significance.

Prince Charles was the second child and eldest (and only surviving) son of Charles XI of Sweden and Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark.

Charles XI had stipulated a regency, but the regents proved anxious to obtain the new king’s concurrence in all decisions, and the Riksdag called in November 1697 declared him of age.

The latest polling data from the company YouGov show Vietnam to lead the list of countries most supportive of their governments’ efforts to combat COVID-19. To be exact, 95% of Vietnamese people think their government is handling the pandemic “very” or “somewhat” well. But this doesn’t mean the Vietnamese people are letting down their guard. Of the 26 countries measured by the YouGov researchers, Vietnam also exhibits the highest level of COVID-19 fear; 89% of the Vietnamese population are “very” or “somewhat” concerned they will contract the disease. This finding is interesting, as one might assume that fear should drop to the extent that citizens believe their government has things under control. Then again, unprecedented events often produce unexpected results.

Other countries that are handling the crisis well, at least in the eyes of its citizens, include India, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Canada, and Finland. Where does the United States stand? Toward the bottom of the pack. According to the most recent YouGov polling data, less than half (49%) of Americans think the government is handling the pandemic “very” or “somewhat” well. This squares with other polling data in the United States. A recent Pew Research poll, for instance, found that 65% of Americans felt that the federal government was too slow to take major steps to address the threat posed by COVID-19.

The three countries where citizens show the weakest support of their governments’ handling of the pandemic are Spain, France, and Japan. In each of these countries, less than 40% of people are supportive of their governments’ handling of the crisis. And then there’s the case of Sweden. Interestingly, the data show a significant increase in Swedish citizens’ support of the way their government has handled the crisis. Currently, 57% of Swedes think their government is handling the pandemic “very” or “somewhat” well compared to 41% a month ago. This may have to do with the fact that more Swedes are buying into the government’s contrarian approach to managing the crisis. Unlike most of the developed world, Sweden decided not to close businesses and schools. A recent article in Bloomberg suggests that COVID-19 infections and fatalities are beginning to plateau in Sweden and the popularity of Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has soared.

Founded in 2013, the AfD isn’t brand new, nor is its provocative, thinly veiled racism and Islamophobia. But over the course of the past five years—and in the face of damning revelations last week about a secret meeting that took place in November—it has radicalized dramatically. The AfD is now more extreme than many fellow far-right parties across Europe, such as the Sweden Democrats, the Finns Party, and the Dutch Party for Freedom, among others.

Germany’s foremost expert on the subject, sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer, said the AfD now stands for an “authoritarian national radicalism,” namely, an ideology that propagates a hierarchically ordered, ethnically homogeneous society overseen by a strong-arm state. What’s particularly radical, he said, is the party’s communication with and mobilization of misanthropic groups that rain violence on select minorities

Its victims are refugees, foreign nationals, Jews, Muslims, and LGBTQ+ people.

Swedish police said 15 to 20 people were injured in a fire at a shelter for asylum seekers on Saturday night.

US President Donald Trump this month suggested that immigrants in Sweden were to blame for an increase in crime. Trump's statements puzzled many in Sweden.

Sweden has taken in more refugees per capita than any other European country in recent years, fueling tension and spiking anti-immigrant sentiment.

Late last year, Christer Stoltz, chief of contingency planning for Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, got an unusual letter from the central government in Stockholm, telling him to get ready for war.

“increase their ability to resist an armed attack against Sweden from a qualified opponent,”

The planning was also intended to respond to natural disasters, oil spills or cyberattacks that could disrupt power and water supplies

His new book, "The Son Also Rises" (Clark is a big fan of Hemingway puns), traces families with particular surnames to measure social mobility over the course of hundreds of years in England, the United States, Sweden, India, China and more. He finds that there's much less mobility than we often assume, and that government interventions to promote it more often than not fail.

What gave you the idea to look at surname data? Initially I was interested just in extending conventional social mobility estimates into the distant past. Estimating social mobility is very data intensive. You need to link individual parents and children. There are thus no such estimates for any society before 1850. Tracking surname status was a convenient shortcut. In most societies, all the people with a surname such as Goodhart descended from the earlier set of Goodharts. We do not know the individual linkages, but we can ask what is happening to their status as a group across generations.

I found that you get radically slower estimated mobility rates for all societies when you switch to surnames.

leading to a conflict with his half brother Erik XIV, king of Sweden from 1560. Erik limited John’s authority and imprisoned him in 1563 after the Duke had acquired a base in Poland by marrying Catherine (1562), sister of Sigismund II Augustus of Poland. After his release in 1567, John joined with his younger brother, the future Charles IX of Sweden, in 1568 to overthrow Erik and secure the throne for himself.

In 1586 John nominated his son Sigismund, who had been brought up as a Catholic, for the vacant Polish throne but withdrew his sponsorship when the Poles demanded the return of Estonia as a condition of Sigismund’s accession.

John and Charles, who had contested his brother’s religious policy, became reconciled in common opposition to the nobles’ aspirations, but Sigismund nevertheless assumed the Polish throne in 1587.

As with any loving relationship, mine with Sweden is multidimensional and complex. I’m Nigerian American, and I’m a naturalized Swede based in Stockholm. I speak the language, and I’m raising its next generation. I was not surprised that some valid criticisms of the country’s history were quickly dismissed by Swedes. At the same time, I understand the Swedish defensiveness.

it is the most open society, run by the most private people. The cultural tropes it is praised for play a part in this: Lagom stipulates that we must take care of our individual needs first, without aggravating others in the process. This creates a society of interiority in which people are open-minded enough to allow their neighbors to do whatever they want, yet keep very close bubbles around their own lives to avoid stress, discomfort, and the unfamiliar

This is a part of why we have a segregated society where ethnic minorities congregate in subcommunities in order to feel accepted and listened to.

"We haven't heard rhetoric like this in Europe since the 1930s. It really worries me," Morgan Johansson, Sweden's baby-faced immigration minister, told me as we discussed growing support amongst his countrymen and women for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats Party

It has roots in the neo-Nazi movement.

But the current mass arrival of asylum seekers is forcing Sweden to face uncomfortable questions about the kind of society it wants - and can afford - to be.

A masked man who killed a teacher and a pupil at a school in Sweden had "racist motives", police believe.

Police chief Niclas Hallgren said they had based their conclusion on what was found at the killer's apartment and "his behaviour during the act".

He had allegedly joined a campaign to push for a referendum on whether Sweden should continue accepting migrants.