Swedish News

Dangerous pedestrians. Lingon lover. What cartoon figure earns the most? The fastest growing municipality in Sweden 

  • The fastest growing municipality in Sweden? It's Håbo, whose coat of arms is seen above.
  • Dangerous pedestrians
    Pedestrians are as dangerous to bikers as bikers are to cars, according to research from Chalmers University of Technology, daily Göteborgs-Posten reports. A third of all bike accidents investigated were caused by pedestrians—the same proportion as car accidents. According to researcher Marco Dozza, collisions with pedestrians may be just as serious. ”A crash with a pedestrian may be as fatal as a crash with a car,” Dozza told the newspaper.

  • An extraordinary appetite for lingonberries (or appetite for the money the red berries can bring in) prompted a person to steal 1,248 kilos of lingon (that’s 2,751 lbs) from a place in Ludvika last weekend.
  • Lingon lover
    1,248 kilos of lingon (that's 2,750 lbs) were stolen in Ludvika during the weekend. A person reported that he lost several packages of what Swedes in general refer to ”the red gold of the forest” or ”skogens röda guld” from the same spot.

  • Pedestrians are as dangerous to bikers, as bikers are to cars.
  • What cartoon figure earns the most?
    Children's cartoon figures are big business for the companies that own the rights. Through the sales of games, pillowcases, T-shirts, cups and much more, thousands of children and adults are lured into purchases. But which character is the most popular? Who sells the most? Well, topping the list in Sweden are the beloved characters by Astrid Lindgren: Pippi, Emil and the rest of them—together Saltkråkan AB, the company with the rights, made a fortune of 20.8 million SEK ($3 million) last year. It’s hard to believe it, but Alfons Åberg, or Alfie Atkins as he’s known in English, turned 40 last year. The little figure, created through a string of children’s books by author Gunilla Bergström, is also popular for toys. Last year the company BokMakaren made 438,000 SEK ($66,000) on Alfons. Then there’s Lilla spöket Laban (the Little Ghost Godfrey) by Inger and Lasse Sandberg; the company Tre Sandberg AB made 68,000 SEK ($10,000) last year on the friendly ghost.

  • Leaving too much for another day? A new, Swedish Internet-based treatment will now be tested on procrastinators.
  • The fastest growing municipality in Sweden
    Children, immigration and people moving from other municipalities are key ingredients when it comes to having as much growth in a municipality as possible. Only 54 municipalities of Sweden's 290 can call themselves a ”super municipality,” the definition being that they have grown faster than Sweden as a whole during the past 10 years. According to daily Dagens Samhälle, the growth takes place as more people move here than the number of people who leave and more people are born than die here. Topping the list of communities where more people are born than die, is Håbo, outside of Uppsala in the province Uppland. In 10 years it has increased its number of citizens (which is now close to 20,000) by 2,000, two-thirds of which are babies. ”It’s great, really. I sort of knew we were going to be on top of the list. I had an idea about giving out teddy bears to all the newborn babies some time ago, and realized then just how many babies we have,” says chairwoman of Håbo Municipality Board Agneta Hägglund. But there are challenges to growing like this as well: "We have to build more housing. Adding to that we also need to increase the number of jobs we offer,” concludes Hägglund.
    (It should be noted here that Håbo since 2001 is connected with the Stockholm commuter rail system by an extension to Bålsta.)

  • Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking) and other characters created by Astrid Lindgren are bestsellers. Last year, Saltkråkan AB, the company with the rights to Lindgren's characters, made a fortune of 20.8 million SEK ($3 million).