Swedish chefs clinch silver at Bocuse d’Or

Sweden took home the silver in the European final of prestigious gastronomical competition Bocuse d’Or in Trondheim. 

The chefs had to compose a dinner out of Norwegian ingredients skrei (a type of cod), dried and salted cod, scallops and reindeer.

“I’m very happy but not satisfied, I would have wanted the gold,” Gustav Leonhardt told Swedish news agency TT afterwards.

The gold instead went to Denmark, while Norway claimed third place, making it an all-Scandinavian top three.

Out of 20 countries that participated on Wednesday, 10 went go through to the world final in Lyon in January next year.

Swedish vocabulary: a chef – en kock

Did Stockholm’s new underground line kill Karolinska’s lab rats?

Researchers at Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute suspect that some of their laboratory rats died due to stress as a result of controlled explosions carried out to build Stockholm’s new underground line, reports research magazine Forskning & Framsteg.

Construction got under way on the new underground line between Odenplan and Arenastaden in January 2020. In August the same year, Karolinska Institute researchers during trials began seeing heart arrhythmia in their lab rats, who were also dying faster than before.

Between August 2022 and December last year, 31 out of 35 rats died in trials. Before that, the survival rate was between 67 and 90 percent.

The research team believes, but concede they have no evidence, that the rats were affected by vibrations from the blasts. A new station, Hagastaden, is also being built near Karolinska as part of the new underground. Region Stockholm, however, dismisses the suspicions.

Swedish vocabulary: a rat – en råtta

Uppsala ambulance staff handed bulletproof vests

Ambulance staff in Uppsala are the first in Sweden to wear bulletproof vests, writes union magazine Kommunalarbetaren.

“I’m happy I have it. I feel safe,” ambulance worker Lena Arkegrim told the magazine. 

She said the region first started talking about bulletproof vests on callouts after the deadly terror attack in Stockholm in 2017, but in recent months Uppsala has had several gang-related shootings. 

Uppsala is the only region to have introduced the extra protection, according to Kommunalarbetaren, but the issue has been up for discussion in both Stockholm and Dalarna. In Gävleborg, staff have been trained in dealing with threats or violence, and in Sörmland a survey has been carried out to pick up on staff concerns.

Swedish vocabulary: a bulletproof vest – en skottsäker väst

Swedish ski resorts boosted by shortage of snow in the Alps

A weak krona and higher certainty of snow boosted Sweden’s ski resorts this winter, as more foreign tourists seem to be turning northwards in search of a cold winter. Ski resorts in the Alps are increasingly struggling with a lack of snow on the slopes due to climate change.

Foreign tourists made up around 30 percent of visitors to Skistar resorts in Sweden, with Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom being among the top countries. 

Skistar CEO Stefan Sjöstrand stressed in an interview with Swedish news agency TT that he was not happy with the consequences of climate change, but conceded that when Europe gets warmer, more ski tourists head to Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia.

“The climate investigations we’ve done together with SMHI and DMI [the Swedish and Danish meteorological offices] show that Scandinavia is the winter when it comes to skiing and certainty of snow in the next 20-50 years,” he said.

Swedish vocabulary: a ski resort – en skidort

In case you missed it: Is it time for Sweden to embrace language barriers?

In a recent article in Dagens Nyheter, journalist Alex Schulman praised the Danish coach of Sweden’s football team for speaking English in press conferences, rather than Scandinavian.

For most immigrants, language barriers are a fact of life, writes The Local’s deputy editor Becky Waterton in a new opinion piece.

“Whether that’s trying to decipher the syllables of a Swedish sentence as a new learner or being met with a blank stare when we try to order a coffee for the first time in Swedish, it’s a natural part of getting to know a new country,” she writes.

“Swedes, on the other hand, seem to find language barriers intensely awkward, doing whatever they can to either avoid them or pretend they don’t exist,” she continues. “But wouldn’t it be better to embrace the Danish-Swedish language barrier, instead of avoiding it?”

Swedish vocabulary: Danish – danska