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DATING

Want to date a Swede? Head to these cities

Small cities Malmö and Linköping are the places to be if you want to go on a date in Sweden, according to research carried out by a new dating app.

Want to date a Swede? Head to these cities
What's the best place for dating in Sweden? Photo: Carolina Romare/imagebank.sweden.se

The team behind HIMYNAMEIS, a Swedish dating startup, toured 31 Swedish cities over three weeks, then ranked the places they visited out of ten, basing the points allocation on factors like the number of singles willing to date, quality and variety of dating, and the city’s romantic atmosphere.

The results suggested that not big cities Stockholm or Gothenburg, but small ones like Linköping and Malmö are the places most likely to produce the best dating experience.

“Linköping was really pleasant with its lake, really good nightlife and bars, and the same thing with Malmö,” co-founder Ludvig Lindström told The Local.

“A combination of the romantic atmosphere, lots of places to date and number of singles who were open to new ways to date made those two cities the best, though it was pretty close.”

Less favourable were the unscientific study's results from Sweden’s two biggest cities. Capital Stockholm ranked five out of ten, while Gothenburg came rock bottom with only three out of ten.

“There are a lot of singles in Stockholm as it’s a really big city, but it’s also really stressed and it seems like their dates are very quick,” warned Lindström.

“It’s like a production line. One date, then the next, then the next. The quality of the date may not be good, but you can get a lot of them.”

Hoping to compete with dating apps such as Tinder, the app asks users to upload short clips of themselves in order to find potential matches, with the claim being that video provides a more authentic impression of a person than images. But it seems Gothenburg's residents weren't so keen on trying out the new method.

“I was surprised, people from Gothenburg are very friendly, but we went to Chalmers University’s student union to hand out fliers and were told to leave,” laughed Lindström.

“The same thing actually happened in two other places in Gothenburg. We weren’t happy about that, so that also played a part in the ranking,” he admitted. 

As for any internationals hoping to date a Swede, the south of the country could be the best place to start.

“Malmö is an international city, so it’s really easy to melt in there if you’re from somewhere else,” Lindström recommended. “It’s a city made up of hundreds of different nationalities, so it could be a good place to start if you’re from abroad.”

Cosmopolitans thinking of flocking to Malmö in their masses may want to consider the full list, detailed below.

Sweden’s best dating cities (according to HIMYNAMEIS):

1. Malmö (8/10)
1. Linköping (8/10)
3. Norrköping (7/10)
4. Örebro (7/10)
5. Halmstad (7/10)
5. Umeå (7/10)
7. Uddevalla (7/10)
8. Falun (7/10)
9. Visby (7/10)
10. Östersund (7/10)
11. Karlstad (6/10)
11. Kalmar (6/10)
13. Jönköping (6/10)
14. Karlskrona (6/10)
15. Helsingborg (6/10)
16. Trollhättan (6/10)
17. Stockholm (5/10)
18. Lund (5/10)
19. Skellefteå (5/10)
19. Växjö (5/10)
19. Västerås (5/10)
22. Borgholm (5/10)
23. Uppsala (4/10)
24. Borås (4/10)
25. Kristianstad (4/10)
25. Luleå (4/10)
27. Gävle (3/10)
28. Skövde (3/10)
29. Sundsvall (3/10)
30. Örnsköldsvik (3/10)
31. Göteborg (3/10)

HEALTH

IN PICTURES: 7 of the French government’s sexiest public health adverts

An advertising campaign aimed at convincing young people to get the Covid vaccine has attracted international attention, but it’s not the first time that French authorities have sexed up their public health messaging.

IN PICTURES: 7 of the French government's sexiest public health adverts
Image: AIDES.

It’s an international cliché that France is the land of l’amour – or at least the land of le sexe – and that reputation does seem to be justified, given how often French public health bodies have turned to sex in an attempt to get their message across.

From the suggestive to the downright scandalous, here are seven examples of health campaigns which relied on that oh so French fondness for romance.

Get vaccinated, get laid

The Covid campaign in question was created by regional health authorities in the southern Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur region.

The poster which has got people hot under the collar features two very attractive and very French-looking people kissing, seemingly in the back of a cab after a night on the town. “Yes, the vaccine can have desirable effects,” it says.

The campaign has proved so popular that it will soon be expanded.

Promoting road safety

Earlier this year, the French Road Safety Delegation released a video ahead of Valentine’s Day, which showed a couple sharing an intimate moment in the bedroom.

The full 30-second video featured the slogan, “Life is better than one last drink for the road”.

Another image of two people kissing, seemingly without clothes, included the line, “Life, love. On the road, don’t forget what truly matters.”

Fight against HIV/AIDS

While the link between road safety and sex isn’t immediately obvious, less surprising are the references to intimacy in the health ministry’s HIV awareness campaign from 2016.

Each of the different posters shows two men embracing. Straplines include, “With a lover, with a friend, with a stranger. Situations vary, and so do the protective measures.”

The posters shocked conservative sensibilities, and several right-wing mayors asked for them to be taken down in their towns. 

HIV awareness campaign

Just a few days after the controversy over the ministry’s posters ignited, the non-profit AIDES launched its own campaign, and it didn’t hold back.

The posters showed scuba instructors, piano teachers and parachutists, all of them naked alongside their students. The slogan: “People undergoing treatment for HIV have a lot of things to pass onto us. But the AIDS virus isn’t one.”

“Even if we’ve been spreading this information since 2008, we realise that a lot of people don’t know that antiviral treatments prevent spreading,” head of AIDES Aurélien Beaucamp told France Info.

“People are still afraid of those who are HIV-positive.” 

Government-mandated pornography

It’s common for sexualised advertising campaigns to be labelled pornographic by critics, but in 1998, the French government went a step further and created actual pornography.

READ ALSO Language of love – 15 of the best romantic French phrases

The health ministry commissioned TV station Canal Plus to create five short erotic films to encourage the use of condoms and prevent the spread of HIV. The campaign featured up-and-coming directors such as Cedric Klapisch and Gaspar Noé.

“The only possible way to look at, to get people to protect themselves, is to show, show everything, show simply and without creating an obsession of the sexual act and the act of wearing a condom,” Klapisch said, according to an Associated Press story published at the time. 

You didn’t really think we’d include images of this one, did you? (OK, here’s a link for those who are curious).

A controversial anti-smoking campaign

https://twitter.com/MarketainmentSE/status/212863393143586817

It’s time to forget what we said about romance, because there is nothing romantic about this 2010 campaign from the Droits des Non-Fumeurs (Non-smokers’ rights) association and the BDDP & Fils communications agency.

The campaign featured several images of young people with a cigarette in their mouths, looking up at an adult man who rested his hand on their heads. The cigarette appeared to be coming out of the man’s trousers.

The slogan said, “Smoking means being a slave to tobacco”. The association said the sexual imagery was meant to get the attention of young people who were desensitised to traditional anti-smoking messages, but the posters caused outrage, with members of the government publicly criticising the choice of imagery.

Celebrating LGBTQ+ love

On the other end of the spectrum is this very romantic video from the national health agency Santé Publique France. It was released on May 17th 2021, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, and was part of a campaign against anti-LGBT discrimination and violence. It is set to Jean-Claude Pascal’s Nous les amoureux

Showing a diverse range of couples kissing, holding hands, and healing each other’s wounds, the video ends on the word play: “In the face of intolerance, it’s up to us to make the difference.”

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