Police investigate after false bomb alarm in Lund

Police are still investigating after a thermos sparked huge disruption to the university town of Lund on Monday.

The thermos was found on Klostergatan – a central street lined with shops, cafés and restaurants – which was cordoned off alongside the nearby Bantorget square. All the shops in the area had to be evacuated as the national bomb squad arrived to examine the thermos.

It turned out, however, not to be dangerous, and after about two hours the cordons were lifted.

Police have opened a probe into aggravated threats to investigate the incident.

Swedish vocabulary: to investigate – att undersöka

More than one in ten foreigners in Sweden don’t have a close friend

Around 700,000 people over the age of 16 in Sweden don’t have a close friend, a new survey by national number crunchers Statistics Sweden shows.

“It’s statistically proven that between 610,000 and 720,000 people aged 16 and above don’t have a close friend. That corresponds to seven to eight percent of the population at that age,” said Statistics Sweden analyst Thomas Helgeson in a statement.

It’s more than twice as common for foreign-born people not to have a close friend.

Around 13 percent of Sweden’s foreign-born population don’t have a close friend. If you compare the figures for people born in Sweden to two foreign-born parents, and people born in Sweden to two native-born Swedes, they’re similar: both just over six percent.

Swedish vocabulary: a friend – en vän/kompis

Sixth season of Sweden’s real-time elk show gets under way

The sixth season of one of Swedish public broadcaster SVT’s most unlikely hit shows, Den stora älgvandringen (The Great Elk Trek), premiered in the early hours of Monday. This year, for the first time, it will also be possible to watch the programme in Germany.

Cameras are set up to follow the animals as they travel from the coast where they spend the winter to their summer grazing spot near the foot of the mountains, by swimming across the Ångermanälven in Jämtland once the ice has melted – as they’ve done for 9,000 years.

So what happens on the show? Not much, and that’s the point. 

Anders Lindberg, a columnist for Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, told the AFP news agency last year: “It’s a form of meditation, which I think for many people is something that they need in their lives, and something they lack for example in big cities like Stockholm.”

“It’s TV, it’s show business and it’s quite good show business,” he said. “I think this could be exported to other countries also. The whole concept of sitting and watching nothing happening for hours and hours could be quite healthy for more people than us.”

Swedish vocabulary: elk/moose – älg

Not a drill when Jas Gripen jets scrambled above Gotland

It was not a drill when two Jas 39 Gripen jets were scrambled above Gotland on Sunday, the Swedish Air Force has confirmed.

A spokesperson for the air force told the TT news agency that it was “neither a violation [of airspace] nor an exercise”, but declined to elaborate on exactly what it was. It has happened before that jets are sent to intercept foreign aircraft that stray close to their airspace.

The incident was revealed after several loud bangs were heard from the west coast of the Baltic Sea island.

“Sometimes we’re in a hurry and this time there were sonic booms,” a spokesperson told P4 Gotland.

Swedish vocabulary: a sonic boom – en ljudbang