Swedish News

Stieg Larsson tops 1 million mark in sales. Whales to be counted in the Baltic Sea. From Bond to Blomkvist. International Dagger Award to Johan Theorin. Food waste to be examined. School refuses to enroll student with Arabic name.  

  • Stieg Larsson tops 1 million mark in sales
    Stieg Larsson is the first author to sell more than one million books in Amazon's Kindle electronic bookstore, the online retail giant said July 27. Amazon said its Kindle store sold more than one million digital copies of the books in Larsson's Millennium Trilogy: "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," "The Girl Who Played with Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest."
    Amazon said all three books are among the top 10 best-selling Kindle books of all time. Larsson, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Expo, died suddenly of heart attack at age 50 in 2004. The Millennium Trilogy chronicles the adventures of Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist like Larsson, and a young computer hacker and punky cohort in solving mysteries, Lisbeth Salander.

  • Whales to be counted in the Baltic Sea
    Porpoises are the only whales that occur in the Baltic Sea and their existence there is now threatened. Nobody knows the exact number of porpoises in the Baltic, but in order to be better prepared to help the population to survive, they will now be counted. Porpoises, also called mereswines, are also related to dolphins. The kind of porpoises found in the Baltic Sea, is the Harbor Porpoise.

  • From Bond to Blomkvist
    Daniel Craig is his name, but you might know him as Bond, James Bond. Forget Brad Pitt, it is British actor Daniel Craig who will play Mikael Blomkvist in the US version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and the two sequels “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest”. Sony Pictures Entertainment, director David Fincher and producer Scott Rudin are in the middle of casting the young actress who'll play the juicy role of Lisbeth Salander. The website www.deadline.com previously released those candidates, which include Ellen Page, Mia Wasikowska (“Alice in Wonderland”), Emily Browning (“Sucker Punch”), Sara Snook (“Sleeping Beauty”), Rooney Mara (“The Social Network”) and Sophie Lowe (“Blame”). Sony just dated the film for a December 21, 2011 release. Steve Zaillian adapted the novel for the screen.

  • International Dagger Award to Johan Theorin
    Swedish author Johan Theorin has won the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger award for his book “Nattfåk” (“The Darkest Room”). Many were those who expected another Swede to take home the prize (Stieg Larsson for “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest”), but instead it went to Theorin, a journalist and author born in Göteborg in 1963. “Nattfåk” takes place on the island of Öland, where the Westin family from Stockholm moves in order to begin life anew. They move into a house that once belonged to the lighthouse-keeper. The house has been empty for years, many deaths have taken place there, and more are about to take place. Theorin received Svenska Deckarakademins (Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy) prize for this novel in 2008. It is The Crime Writers Association in the United Kingdom, founded by John Creasey in 1953, that hands the annual dagger awards. “The Darkest Room” ISBN-10: 0385342225.

  • Food waste to be examined
    Thousands of tons of fruit, vegetables and meat are thrown out every year in Swedish food stores. A report is now to be made about the reasons for this waste. The Nordic Council of Ministers has agreed to finance it and it will cover all other Nordic countries as well. One of the reasons is believed to be the desire among the consumers to have stores with many things to choose from in combination with the difficulty to sell products when the “best before date” has expired. According to Dagens Nyheter, 11 000 tons of food has been thrown away yearly by Coop (one of the biggest food chains in Sweden) alone since 1995. That number is now believed to have increased.

  • School refuses to enroll student with Arabic name
    A 13-year-old female student has submitted a complaint to the Discrimination Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen, DO), charging that a school refused to enroll her because of her Arabic-sounding name. 

On June 10th, the day schools closed, the girl applied to Husbygårdsskolan in Kista northwest of Stockholm for the next semester, she wrote in a notification dated July 2nd. 

The following day, her mother, a co-complainant, received a message from a school secretary, saying that there were no more places at the school and that the application was rejected. 

The secretary then asked if the school should rip up the application and the student's mother, unaware of the consequences, said yes. 

Suspicious, a week later on June 18th, the subject's older sister called the principal, claiming to be a Swedish woman named "Annelie" seeking a spot for her son "Johan," who was the same age as her, or about to enter 8th grade. 

"The headmaster became totally lyrical and implored 'Annelie' to make contact with the school secretary in charge of the admission process as soon as possible," wrote the complainant. "The principal said that there was room at the school and closed the conversation by saying, 'See you in the fall.'" 

The girl's sister called and again pretended to be "Annelie," this time to the secretary at the invitation of the rector. 

"[Blacked out] was also very happy about 'Annelie’s'' and 'Johan's' interest in the school and assured that there were places before the autumn holidays for grade 8 because they had reorganized the school to create a large grade 8 class from two former grade 7 classes," the complainant wrote. 

According to the notice, the secretary offered to pick "Annelie" up along the way and guide her around the school so that she could see the school buildings. 

Two minutes later, after ending the call, the child's mother called using her own Arabic name and asked if there was space since her request was previously denied. 

The secretary allegedly replied "rather angrily" that "there was no place, that it was full, that there was a lack of space." Instead, the mother was offered to return later in the autumn if the situation changed, but everything was full. 

"I, my mother and my sister, as well as our whole family was deeply offended by this treatment and want the Discrimination Ombudsman to act speedily to defend our rights and help us obtain redress," the complainant wrote. 

The girl attached transcripts of the phone calls made on June 18th to her complaint, adding that the Office for Equal Rights (Byrån för Lika Rättigheter) had the original audio files.