Swedish News.

Tablet computer is “Christmas gift of the year.” Project Art Break. Record support for Moderate party. Unique shipwreck found in the inner-city.  

  • Tablet computer is “Christmas gift of the year”
    The tablet computer has been announced “the Christmas gift of the year” by the Swedish retail industry association Svensk Handel. This is the 23th year such an announcement is made. It is really more of a trend spotting than a tangible gift tips. ”The tablet computer will get a real boost with the Apple iPad release in Sweden, and many manufacturers are expected to follow and sales will thus explode,” Svensk Handel writes in a statement.

  • Project Art Break
    Check out the advertising signs in Malmö and Stockholm and many other Swedish cities in December – gone are the ads,which have been replaced by… art! Project “Art break” is realized by the ad company JC Decaux, and it means that during one month all ads will be replaced by art work done by a number of artists. “It’s a strategic and long term bid from our side,” explains director of communications at JC Decaux, Carina Herly. “Art break” is meant to continue the next three years in Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö and Uppsala and the participating artists will also be presented with an exhibition. First artist out is Per Josephson, an industrial designer whose piece “Varje dag” (Every day) was created specifically for this project and consists of 12 light cubes in which collages with pieces by artists like Malevich and Magritte are included. “I steal, I sample and I let myself get inspired by the great masters,” says Josephson, who has had exhibitions in the public space of Stockholm, Malmö, and Göteborg cities before. “That’s the foundation of all my art,” he says. “The public space.” The thought with “Art break” is to move the art from the museums and galleries out into the streets, to make it more accessible to people.

  • Record support for Moderate party
    The Moderate party (liberal-conservative) gets a record high 37.5 % in the latest opinion poll made by Synovate. That is their best result ever in any opinion poll and 7.4 % points better than the result in the September election. The Social democrats gets 27.7 %, 3 % points worse than their already disastrous election result. The center-right parties get a majority and thus the Sweden democrats looses their position as king-makers. However, it is only a poll and the next election is in 2014.

  • Unique shipwreck found in the inner-city
    A few weeks ago a shovel operator discovered some old pieces of wood when excavating outside the Grand Hotel in inner-city Stockholm. Archeologists now confirm that it is an extraordinary find, a ship which could be from the 17th century, built with a locally unknown technology. The very uniqueness of the ship is that the planks on the outside of the hull have been carefully stitched together with rope. A technology previously best known from countries east of Sweden. The guess is therefore that the ship is from the Baltic or Russia.