Swedish News:

Camping attracts foreign tourists to Sweden. Bought a church for 1 krona. U.S. lobster – no thanks. Iraq to open schools in Sweden. 

  • Camping attracts foreign tourists to Sweden
    The number of foreign guest nights at Swedish camping sites has increased with 16.5 percent over the past four years. More than one in four international tourists visiting Sweden last year, chose to camp, according to Statistiska Centralbyrån (Statistics Sweden). The 16.5% increase is more than double the total increase of foreign guest nights in Sweden. “It’s great to see foreign tourism increasing, it’s good for Sweden,” says Lars Isacson, CEO of Sveriges Camping- och Stugföretagares Riksorganisation SCR (the Swedish Camping Site Owners' Association - http://www.scr.se).

  • Bought a church for 1 SEK
    One Swedish crown, or 14 US cents – that's how much Örja Church in Landskrona was sold for to a private person. The organ, churchyard, and baptismal font were not included in the bargain though. It’s the first church surrounded by a churchyard to be sold in Sweden, according to Kyrkans tidning. “The land has no value, and there’s also a freeway running past nearby, which means it is continuously noisy. We are happy to have found a buyer, as this means the church will remain where it is,” says vicar Bengt Karlsgren. The church fell into disuse in 2004, after having been left unattended since 1996. To have it renovated would cost close to SEK17 million ($2.5 million).

  • U.S. lobster – no thanks
    Havs och vattenmyndigheten (the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management) wants to stop the import of living American lobster. The reason? To protect the Swedish lobster. Every year 200-300 tons of living lobster is imported for consumption. There’s a high risk this lobster will be put out in bags in the water, in spite of it being prohibited to do so, and that would threaten the Swedish lobster through disease. “We don’t want people not to eat American lobster,” says investigator Susanne Vikner in a press release. “But perhaps they don’t have to see it alive first?”

  • Iraq to open schools in Sweden
    Iraq wants to open schools in Sweden, with the idea of education being in Arabic, and aimed at children with an Iraqi background. In a letter to Utbildningsdepartementet (the Ministry of Education and Research), the Iraqi Embassy writes that the schools are to cover the nine-year long compulsory school, and that they will be financed by the Iraqi government. “Sooner or later many of the Iraqis in Sweden will go back (to Iraq), and we want them to have an educational background suited for Iraq and that they know Arabic,” says Iraq’s Ambassador to Sweden Hussain Al-Ameri to the newspaper Riksdag & Departement on the net.