Swedish News

More Swedish millionaires. Arrested: Swedish terror suspect. Anita Ekberg speaks out about the royal wedding. Sven Nykvist honored with an institute. Outdoors play – a springboard to the unknown.  

  • Sven Nykvist honored with an institute
    The world famous film photographer Sven Nykvist (famous foremost for his work with Ingmar Bergman) will be honored with a cinematographic institute. The thought with the project is to first gather money from an August auction. It is the auction house Bukowskis that is auctioning out parts of Nykvist’s film paraphernalia. Among these objects are Nykvist’s first ever film camera, a number of clapperboards from international productions as well as photographs from different film shoots. Sven Nykvist Cinematography Institute is described in a press release as an educational forum aimed at film photographers, photographers and university students who study photographic art. Sven Nykvist, who passed away in 2006, completed a total of 130 films, and worked with, among others, Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, Jan Troell, Roman Polanski, and Lasse Hallström. He received two Oscars for best photography, one for “Cries and Whispers” in 1973, and the other for “Fanny and Alexander” in 1983.

  • Outdoors play – a springboard to the unknown
    It’s finally summer and who wants to be inside? If you have children, make sure you get them to play outside in the warm weather. Playing outside is a way for kids to explore themselves and their surroundings, according to Fredrika Mårtensson, an environmental psychologist who is studying children’s playing habits in the outdoors. She adds that being out and about in nature is great for children’s health. Exploring is a fundamental instinct among all humans. And children’s play is really all about the curiosity to get to know oneself and find oneself in one’s surroundings. Says Mårtensson: “What separates inside and outside play, is that the inside environment, like the home or the school, is often a safe surrounding. Outside, on the other hand, is a place for the child to find out who he she or is in relationship to this place on Earth.” Few researchers have looked closer at children’s play in the past, most focus has been on the way animals play. Developmental psychology has been concentrated on the cognitive development of the child, that is how their thinking evolves. But the physical play has fallen behind, even though most parents tell their children to “go out and play” - instinctively knowing it is good for them. In her 2004 dissertation “The landscape of the play”, Mårtensson studied videotaped snippets of how children move and how games are created as an interplay between the child and the environment. “The movement outside is more centered, it’s more focused,” she says. “And in that movement it is not the language that is primary, rather the body language as the children communicate with each other.” In big spaces with lots of trees, bushes and broken ground and where there’s a mix of toys, there are quick changes in the tempo of the play, Mårtensson explains. And it is probably this intimate interplay with the surroundings, the drama and the freedom in exploration that create such strong memories of outdoors playing later in life. Mårtensson believes that it is the flexibility and the possibility to quickly move from quiet to activity, that makes playing outdoors so attractive and healthy. “The child can decide for herself whether she wants to sit still or just run around. She can follow her own inner impulses and ideas, and therefore she will recover faster.”

  • More Swedish millionaires
    Stefan Persson of H&M, is one of the richest people in Sweden. And he is not alone up there on top. There are over 48 000 Swedish dollar millionaires. That means one of every 200 Swedes is a dollar millionaire. The Swedish dollar millionaires have increased with 21.5% since 2008. And in Norway there are even more of them: 74 900. According to a study from Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, this shows that the development in Sweden is stronger than in the rest of Europe where the increase in numbers of dollar millionaire was 17.1%. Says Robin Segerfeldt at Capgemini: “The Swedes have a relatively high share of stocks in their portfolios and the development at the Stockholm Stock Exchange was stronger than on other stock exchanges in many other countries.” During 2009, the number of dollar millionaires around the world increased to 10 million people. Most of them are in the US (3.1 million of them). The USA, Japan, and Germany together have around 53.5% of all the dollar millionaires in the world.

  • Arrested: Swedish terror suspect
    A Swedish citizen was arrested on Tuesday morning in Rinkeby, north-west of Stockholm, on suspicion of terrorism crimes. According to a press release from the Swedish Security Service, the suspicion is about "planning of a possible attack in Somalia". "It is a person arrested today on suspicion of conspiracy to commit terrorist crimes, and he is since earlier charged in his absence, on probable grounds suspected for this,” says deputy chief prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnström, at the International Public Prosecution Office in Stockholm. The suspect was born in 1984 and have Somali origin, according to newspaper Expressen. He was seized by a heavily armed police squad. Hilding Qvarnström confirms that the matter has links to the case in Göteborg, where another person is detained as a suspect. That case has been linked to the Somali terrorist organization al-Shabaab. The Security Service says that several more persons will be heard in the ongoing investigation.

  • Anita Ekberg speaks out about the royal wedding
    Former Swedish movie star Anita Ekberg wasn’t too happy about the recent royal wedding. In an interview she criticizes the costly bash. “It was scandalous,” she says. 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of Ekberg’s most famous film, “La Dolce Vita”, by Fellini, and during a press conference Ekberg was asked what she thought of Crown Princess Victoria’s wedding. Ekberg got quite excited saying that it was a waste of money. “Even Sweden has financial problems,” she said. “There are people who cannot afford to buy lunch and dinner.” Ekberg said she thought it would’ve been better to use the wedding money on the Swedish people.