Swedish News:

They use Instagram the most. Less teachers in rich municipalities. Cheating at Swedish eateries. Seniors get to eat with students. Biggest ship in the world visits Göteborg 

  • Old and young are sharing meals together at Lillholmsskolan, a school in Skärholmen. The result, or one of them, is that the canteen has become a much calmer place.
  • They use Instagram the most
    1.2 million Swedes use the photo app Instagram, and the typical user is a young woman from Jämtland, the province up north. As many as 696,000 Swedes upload photos on Instagram every day, these numbers come from the magazine Dagens Media, which has looked at a study done by Orvesto Konsument. This study shows that 57% of the users are women, and most of them, in comparison to the population, live in Jämtland. Also, nearly 50% of them are under 25 years old. However, people under age 16 were not included in the study. ”Instagram today is a platform for life styles, meaning clothes, cooking, and interior decorating. Perhaps that’s the explanation to why it is predominantly women who use it,” says Ulf Lindholm, communications consultant and expert in social media to daily Metro.

  • The world’s biggest ship, its official name is Maersk Mc-Kinney Möller, is coming to Göteborg next week. Photo: Walter Rademacher
  • Less teachers in rich municipalities
    In daily Svenska Dagbladet, it is stated that the richer a municipality, the more students per teacher. Of Sweden’s 290 municipalities, the richest one – Danderyd, where the average resident makes 345,544 SEK ($52,996) – is the one with the most students per teacher. In Årjäng on the other hand, where the average resident makes less than half than those in Danderyd, 140, 955 SEK ($21,624), the schools have more teachers. ”Our focus is on the students’ result. The question is how much more we need to invest in the school, when we have the best results in all of Sweden,” says Patrik Nimmerstam (from the Center Party), chairman for Barn- och utbildningsnämnden (the Department for Children and Education at Danderyd Municipality) to Svenska Dagbladet. Not everyone agrees with Nimmerstam though, vice chairman of lärarförbundet (the Swedish Teachers’ Union), Anders Almgren, believes that the lack of teachers will affect students who aren’t doing well at school just as much those who do well. When the student body grows, the teachers lose the time they could have spent with students with special needs. ”Our mission is to have all students go as far as they can. These municipalities are content with being the best, but the level of knowledge in Sweden is decreasing, and by that I mean when we compare with a continuously decreasing average.” Svenska Dagbladet’s review is based on statistics from Skolverket (the Swedish National Agency for Education), on the number of elementary school students per teacher in the 290 municipalities as well as income statistics from Statistics Sweden.

  • The typical Instagram user in Sweden is a young (under 25) woman who lives in Jämtland.
  • Cheating at Swedish eateries
    There’s a lot of fooling around with the food at many of Sweden’s restaurants. The dish you order may very well have been cooked with the aid of processed foods, additives, and industrial ingredients, which is not shown on the menu, a new book called ”Saltad nota” reveals. Stiff competition from others in the industry as well as increased demands from restaurant guests to eat cheap, is what’s behind this development. Numerous sauces, stews, and desserts are whipped up with the help of powder mixes. Meat may have been watered out. Perhaps the chicken on your plate at the restaurant comes from one of the giant Thai bird factories, where the animals are kept in conditions that would never be accepted in Sweden. And the cheese on that pizza? It may be a melting products that barely contain any dairy at all. Sveriges Konsumenter (the Swedish Consumers’ Association) is now demanding complete lists of content for restaurant food. ”This information is extremely important to the consumer in order for him to make active choices with regards to environment, health, animal protection and other issues. Today, you have to ask and many feel they don’t want to do that,” says Secretary-General at Sveriges Konsumenter Jan Bertoft.

  • Though it is the richest municipality in Sweden, Danderyd also has more students per teacher than some municipalities that are much poorer.
  • Seniors get to eat with students
    Since spring this year, Lillholmsskolan (a school in Skärholmen, a suburban district in south-western Stockholm) has offered senior citizens the opportunity to share lunch with the students in the school canteen. Now, this lunch-sharing between generations is expanding to include two more schools. According to project leader Kristina Andersson, who is also a certified dietitian, there are great benefits for children as well as the elderly to eat together. ”It’s important to work with prevention and health promotion for our elders,” she says. ”Retirees are happy to be able to eat for a cheap price, and the kids are happy when older people come to visit.” Since the retirees began having lunch at Lillholmsskolan, the canteen has become more peaceful.

  • Who doesn’t like to go out to a restaurant? But beware, there might be ingredients in your food there that’s not mentioned in the menu.
  • Biggest ship in the world visits Göteborg
    It’s as big as four soccer fields and as tall as Gothia Towers hotel (82 meters or 269 feet). It’s the biggest ship in the world, Maersk Triple-E, and next week on Tuesday it will arrive in Göteborg. ”Maersk Triple-E will arrive at five in the morning and just turning it around in the harbor will take nearly an hour and a half,” says Charlotte Blomberg, Communication Manager at Maersk Line. The ship was launched in South Korea in June of this year, and during her maiden voyage she has visited six ports and now it is time for Göteborg, and the Skandia harbor’s container terminal there. During 24 hours, the folks in Göteborg may come and see this historical and gigantic ”miracle”. ”The best place to look at it is from the GKSS bridge in Långedrag and of course on top of the Älvsborgs bridge. Unfortunately there’s no possibility to come onboard.” The ship is 400 meters (1312 feet) long and 59 meters wide (193 feet), and has nine levels above deck, ten underneath, and can hold 18,000 containers (if it were to contain iPads alone, you could fit 182 million of those tablets on it). Maersk Mc-Kinney Möller, the ship’s official name, will travel the Asia and Europe route. It is the first of 20 equally big ships that Maersk has ordered and that will be launched during a two-year period.