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SWEDISH CULTURE

Swedish TV: Watch these series to understand Swedish society

So, you've got a good grasp of Swedish but still feel like there are some cultural references you don't quite 'get'. You're not sure what faluröd means and don't understand why Swedes love eating tacos on Fridays. Here's a list of TV programmes to get you up to speed.

Published: 19 August 2022 13:23 CEST
Updated: 17 April 2024 14:52 CEST
Swedish TV: Watch these series to understand Swedish society
Erik Haag and Lotta Lundgren film "Historieätarna" back in 2016. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Swedes take their homes and gardens very seriously. In a society where showy displays of wealth can be frowned upon, having a nice house and a perfect garden is how Swedes can show off, which is why there are so many lifestyle programmes in Sweden covering these topics.

For garden inspiration, check out Trädgårdstider (Garden Times) on SVT. Although the name suggests that Trädgårdstider is just about gardens, it’s more than that.

Covering food, drink, design, and everything from how to build a sweat tent to a treehouse, this is also entertaining TV for apartment-dwellers. The new series usually premiere right at the end of winter, when the first spring flowers are just popping out of the ground, so it’s a great programme to get you in the mood for Swedish summer.

Brit John Taylor from Trädgårdstider on his allotment in Malmö. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

On top of that, it’s a great introduction to some of SVT’s most well-loved TV presenters, Tareq Taylor, Pernilla Månsson Colt, John Taylor (no relation to Tareq), and Malin Persson.

John, a gardening expert originally from the UK, is the expert on odling, providing tips on how best to grow plants, fruits and vegetables. Tareq Taylor, is a chef who shows you how to use and preserve your homegrown produce by pickling, making jams, or even building a jordkällare for storing produce over the winter. In the newest season of Trädgårdstider, Tareq has left the show – he’s been replaced by Danish chef Adam Aamann.

Månsson Colt and Persson focus on the visual aspects, designing and building different areas of the garden, with Månsson Colt showing viewers what to do with all their homegrown flowers. Although each presenter has a clear role, the best part of the show is watching them all as a team, working on the garden together (Swedes love consensus, after all), and enjoying the fruits of their labour (literally!) at the end of the season.

Trädgårdstider is great for learning the Swedish names for plants, fruits, vegetables and flowers, although you may end up knowing more flower names in Swedish than in your native language by the end of the season.

Fans of building programmes such as Grand Designs will enjoy Husdrömmar (House Dreams), which follows the same premise of home-buyers buying a run-down property and renovating it into their dream home. Presenters Gert Wingårdh and Anne Lundberg visit homes up and down the country, providing viewers with a great insight into Swedish architecture and how Swedes design their homes.

If you’re more into Swedish homes throughout history, try Det sittar i väggarna (It’s in the Walls), where building restoration expert Erika Åberg and historian Rickard Thunér visit beautiful Swedish farmhouses, townhouses and estates.

Erika Åberg and Rickard Thunér. Photo: Maria Rosenlöf/SVT

Åberg helps the families living in the houses with restoration projects – such as how to renovate a Swedish kakelugn or tiled fireplace, how to replace glass panes in lead windows, or how walls were panelled in the 1800s, while Thunér looks into the history of the people who lived there and tries to find a living relative.

Great if you want to learn words like linoljefärg (linseed oil paint) or pärlspont (tongued and grooved wall panelling).

In a similar vein to Det sittar i väggarna, in Historieätarna (History Eaters) SVT profiles Lotta Lundgren and Erik Haag (who have now moved over to commercial broadcaster TV4) eat, dress and live for a week in different decades of Swedish history.

Lotta Lundgren and Erik Haag in the 1960s episode of “Historieätarna”. Photo: Jessica Gow/Scanpix.

Originally shown on SVT from 2012, it follows the two – who have such on-screen chemistry that they actually became a couple off-screen after the show – through every aspect of life in these eras, be it drinking svagdricka, a low-alcohol fermented malt drink which Swedes drank before there was widespread access to reliable drinking water, or living off canned foods in the 1980s.

Historieätarna is not just entertaining TV, it’s also a crash-course in Swedish history, from what Swedes ate and drank, how they dressed, what they did in their free time, and even when – and why – classic Swedish dishes like korv stroganoff and tacofredag became so popular. Unlike many programmes in this style, it doesn’t just follow trends among the rich in these eras, rather shows what life was like for normal Swedes, too.

If you only watch one series on this list, make it Historieätarna.

Member comments

  1. I love to watch Trädgårdstider. I don’t hear well in the first place, so deciphering what little Swedish I might otherwise understand is impossible, Nonetheless, the visual, social and esthetic values (including the personal qualities of the individuals) are compelling. The production, overall, is of the highest quality, in my view.

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SWEDISH HISTORY

OPINION: Why are racists in Sweden angry at history?

Swedish broadcaster SVT recently aired the first episode of its high-profile new series on Swedish history and racists aren't happy about it, The Local's Paul O'Mahony discovers.

Published: 10 November 2023 10:54 CET
OPINION: Why are racists in Sweden angry at history?

On Sunday night I sat down with my family and watched the first episode of Historien om Sverige (“the history of Sweden”), public broadcaster SVT’s big-budget series chronicling 15,000 years of Swedish history.

As the ice age retreated, the show explains, hunter-gatherers made their way north and established the first communities in the territory now known as Sweden.

As discovered by scientists around a decade ago, they were most likely dark-skinned and blue-eyed. Accordingly, this is how they are depicted in the show.

A thought flickers: the legions of online racists won’t like this one bit. Before even checking, I can hazard a decent guess at the caustic subtext in the online forums where racists lurk:

How dare they come up here and take our jobs before we even had jobs for them to take!

All of which is confirmed when I go on to Flashback, the anything-goes Swedish forum where bigots find their tribe.

A thread on the new series drips with the sarcasm-laden diatribes of countless “friends of Sweden”, ever wary of the enemy within, never pausing to consider they might be it.

How can SVT cast Africans as Swedes? Why all this woke, trans-friendly, feminist, left-wing propaganda?

And those are the more gentle comments. Every new page seems worse than the last in this vortex of crud (you’re welcome, heavy metal band name seekers). There are 1,700 comments in the thread I’m reading.

SURVEY:

I rush for the exit but soon hold my nose again and enter the entity formerly known as Twitter. A search for Historien om Sverige reveals another racist broth, though this one is not quite as spicy as Flashback’s.

Time to check Facebook, the festering mire of radicalisation that sucks in uncles and mothers and the second cousin you once thought you knew. And yes, angry aging gentlemen of the internet are also busy peppering Metaland with their hot takes and crap memes.

Algorithmic radicalisation is real. We can inoculate our minds with science but resistance is tough at a time when racists have become emboldened the world over and reason is in decline. The lines drawn against bigotry in our schools, parliaments and places of worship have become blurred as opportunist politicians undermine their worth. That’s as true in Sweden as it is elsewhere. 

It’s exhausting, but we do need to keep fighting these corrosive forces. Confront them in our daily lives. Don’t let ignorance and xenophobia go unchecked.

LISTEN: Why is Sweden scared to talk about racism?

a dark-skinned girl with dark hair and blue eyes

A still image from the series Historien om Sverige. Photo: SVT

So what does the science say on Sweden’s first inhabitants? Archaeology professor Jan Apel explains:

“The two groups that came to Scandinavia were originally genetically quite different, and displayed distinct physical appearances. The people from the south had blue eyes and relatively dark skin. The people from the northeast, on the other hand, had a variation of eye colours and pale skin.

“Originally, humans are a species from warmer climates closer to the equator and we mainly cope with challenging environments with specific behaviour and technology. This includes making fires, clothes and specialised hunting equipment. However, in the long term there is also potential for adaptation through genetic changes.

“For example, we found that genetic variants associated with light skin and eye pigmentation were carried, on average, in greater frequency among Scandinavian hunter gatherers than their ancestors from other parts of Europe. Scientists believe that light skin pigmentation helps people better absorb sunlight and synthesise vitamin D from it.”

My advice to the racist trolls: step out of the dark corners of the internet and into the light. Together we can synthesise some vitamin D and carve out time for real-life conversations. We all came into this world screaming, but we don’t have to stay shrill all our lives.

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