Statistics Sweden’s (Statistiska Centralbyrån) latest numbers reveal that as of 2015, Sweden’s biggest foreign-born community hails from the far-off land of… Finland, with 156,046 Finns now residing across the border.
The two countries have a relationship dating back hundreds of years, and when the stats are broken down by gender, the Swedish-Finnish link is shown to persist particularly strongly among women.
Over eleven percent (11.1) of the foreign-born women in Sweden were born in Finland, amounting to 94,077 people and the biggest group by a clear distance.
The second-largest group of women came from significantly further away (Iraq, 7.2 percent), but the third were also near neighbours, with Poles making up 5.5 percent.
A different group is dominant among men however, with Iraq providing the largest proportion of foreign-born males in Sweden (8.6 percent) at 70,815 people in total. The second-largest group was once again the Finns (7.5 percent), followed by Syrians in third (6.8 percent).
Once a wider net is cast and continents are taken into consideration geographical proximity and free movement in the EU appear to play a big part. Europeans make up almost half (49 percent) of the foreign-born people living in Sweden, significantly more than the second-largest group by continent, which is Asians (34 percent). The third largest group by continent is Africa at 11 percent.
Here's a list of the top-15 birth countries among foreign-born residents, according to Statistics Sweden.
The Swedish population currently hovers around the 9,906,331 mark, and is on course to hit 10 million by 2017.