A very well known symbol for Sweden and one of the most popular souvenirs is the Dala Horse (or Dalecarlian Horse). It’s a hand crafted wooden horse painted with a traditional flower saddle, a so called kurbits pattern. The name comes from its home province, Dalarna, in central Sweden. Most popular are the red-orange horses from the little village of Nusnäs near Mora but they’re also available in range of different colours nowadays. Read more

If you want to watch two longer, but nice clips, on what to see and do in Stockholm if you got three days at your disposal click on the links below.

Stockholm – part 1
Stockholm – part 2

Simon is quite amazed by the fact that it’s so bright here in Sweden during the summer from very early in the morning to very late at night. We discussed this with his parents this weekend and to illustrate this I’ll show you a typical Swedish day in June with some photos taken yesterday at 6am, when I’m up and at it, and at 10.30pm when I head to bed. The sun is set to rise around 4am in Jönköping right now and set just after 10pm but it’s not really fully dark for long in between.

I have since a while ago a new favourite when it comes to drinks – Swedish produced Vitamin Well’s water. It’s non-carbonated drinks enhanced with vitamins, minerals and natural extracts that have less than half of the amount of sugar than regular sodas and juices and is sweetened with pure fructose and no artificial sweeteners. In addition to the six flavours of the non sparkling water they’ve now also introduced three sprakling versions, blood orange is my favourite. A big plus for the nice label too, really appealing graphical design.

It’s hard to know what to do here in life. It’s extremely hard, on the edge of impossible, to find a decent rental apartment in a good area in Göteborg so Simon and I are torn between whether we should buy our own place or not. On one side we yearn to have our own place with an outdoor area with a little garden where we can hang, entertain our friends and above all where Simon can barbecue and on the other hand it might be more sensible not to buy due to the fact that we don’t know what our future has in store for us. Read more

I found a site today that might be useful if you’re looking at visiting Scandinavia. The site is run by Scandinavian Tourist Board or STB as they’re more popularly known and it’s a joint initiative by the national tourist boards of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It doesn’t seem to have been updated in a while but you still can find general information about the three Scandinavian countries as well as travel tips.

The website can be found HERE.

Did you know that there are approximately 25 000 Scandinavian born people living in Australia. The Swedes lead the charge followed by the Danes and the Norwegians and the numbers keep increasing every year.

I just keep going with weird Swedish Midsummer traditions. The night of Midsummer Eve is said to be a magical night and according to old folklore young girls should pick seven different flowers (some believe it to be nine) and put under their pillow. If she does she’ll dream of the man she’ll marry. And yeah, the flowers have to be picked during silence too, if not the magic will be broken and it won’t work. Some also say that she has to clime as many fences as the number of flowers too.

It’s tradition to wear a head wreath with flowers for Midsummer and even if you can buy them, a lot of people actually make their own. Kate Wiseman has made a 5 step guide on how to make your own wreath in her expat blog at Sweden.se. If you want to give it a go, have a look HERE.