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THE BEST OF THE LOCAL 2011

ELK

The Local’s most shared stories on Facebook

Swedish animal antics, medical madness, and plain old errors in human judgment featured prominently in stories by The Local that proved popular on Facebook in 2011.

Published: 23 December 2011 15:32 CET
The Local's most shared stories on Facebook
Biggishben/Wikipedia; Gustav Johansson; Karsten Heinrich/Wikpedia

It’s no secret that Facebook and other social media sites are an increasingly important channel for internet users to get their news.

Indeed, Facebook users shared stories appearing on The Local tens of thousands of times over the course of the last year.

Click here to see which stories from The Local were shared the most on Facebook in 2011.

In fact, The Local’s most shared story on Facebook was passed around a whopping 24,000 times, helping spawn a global media sensation that put one of Sweden’s most famous symbols front and centre in newspapers across world.

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ELK

‘Stop taking selfies with elk,’ police warn Stockholmers

Stockholm police have asked the public to stop taking photos with elk, after several of the wild animals had to be killed after getting agitated by selfie-takers.

Published: 28 September 2021 09:15 CEST
'Stop taking selfies with elk,' police warn Stockholmers
Whether in nature or in the city, if you do see an elk in Sweden, always keep a distance. Photo: Lola Akinmade Åkerström/imagebank.sweden.se

Police needed to shoot the elk after they wandered into residential areas including Nacka and Enskede in the capital, Mitt i Stockholm reports.

“An elk that has got lost can usually find its way back if it is calm. But when people run up and take pictures, it becomes stressed and aggressive. It is utterly misanthropic and it’s outrageous that people do not understand better,” police officer Kenneth Kronberg, responsible for the National Game Accident Council (NVR), told the newspaper. 

“Game wardens have agreed that there is nothing wrong with the elk in the city. However, they get very stressed because there are so many people trying to take pictures. That’s why we have to kill the elk, because of 08-ers [a pejorative term for Stockholmers] who think the animal world looks like a Walt Disney movie.”

As well as avoiding taking photos with the animals, police also urged the public to avoid attempting to pet or stroke them, or getting too close. If you see a wild elk, instead you should keep a safe distance away.

In 2017, a rare while elk drew crowds of visitors hoping to catch a glimpse after a video went viral, and again police had to warn the public to treat the animal with care and avoid approaching it. The elk then grew aggressive, charging at a dog-walker, which led police to say they would need to kill the elk if they could not chase it away from the residential area.

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