Swedish History in 15 minutes!

I have been in Sweden for almost a year and explored the Swedish culture, society and history through travelling, visiting museums, and taking courses as the one that I’m now taking in Swedish Society at KTH. Therefore, let me present to you key facts about the Swedish history in order for you to understand more about it (hopefully in 15 minutes ). It will provide me a good overview too for my exam!

Until 1523: Sweden, Norway and Denmark were united via Kalmar Union, mainly dominated by Denmark.
6 June 1523: Gustav Vasa declared its independence from Denmark-Norway and became a new independent country.
16^th-17^th century: Sweden went in expansion via wars until the Baltic areas. At the same time it continued its expansion to the North which was used by the nomadic Sami’s. Mines were found such as silver mine in 1634 and iron mines. Kiruna is one of the iron mine towns which many people visit in the Arctic Circle (including me, although just passing through ).
1809: Finland previously a part of Sweden became independent.
1814: Sweden gained Norway due to an agreement with Denmark to support in the Napoleonic Wars. It was in this time that the Bernadottes also reigned over Sweden until now.
1870’s: Industrial revolution came to Sweden from the agricultural society, thus people started to move to cities.

1878-1879: Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld succeeds in crossing North-East Passage; sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean via the icy Arctic waters providing Swedes with heroic stories of conquering the North.
1883-1902: Railway to the North and connect Northern parts of Sweden to the Norwegian part of Sweden was built mainly to transport iron ore (and now also for passengers). If you go to the North you can take a day card from Kiruna/Abisko until Narvik by train and see the beautiful fjords on the way 1891: Skansen, the first open air museum was opened just a few years after the Nordic Museum was built by Hazelius in 1872. Skansen is today one of the must-see attractions in Stockholm. Amazingly I have been there 4 times only with a cost of 1 SEK in total!!!
1905: Norway became independent of Sweden.
1906: The flag of Sweden that holds until today was adopted. The colors was nothing symbolic in particular, just the favorite of the royal house and the pattern was said to follow the Danish flag.
1914-1918: Sweden remained neutral in World War I, thus supporting all parties with iron ore (which was used for military purposes)
1915: Porjus hydropower plant was built that was mainly used to electrify the railways in the North. The power plant became quite an issue since it was built without considering much about the living Sami families there and the importance of the river to them.
1930s: Social Democrats dominated the power in Sweden and ruled for around 60 years. They created a welfare state, the folkshemmet vision (socialism) where at the same time, population boom was happening and Stockholm became a city with poor housing condition as the result of industrial revolution. The Swedish model became popular as the middle way between capitalism (USA) and socialism (Soviet Union). The society became workers and it could gain benefit from the society such as pension and insurances in exchange for high taxes.
1939-1945: World War II, again Sweden became neutral but was proven to support both sides during the time at war according to what was beneficial for its own good. During this time “en svensk tiger” propaganda was held to remind Swedes to be careful for foreigners and not to talk with strangers because they could be spies. Maybe this is the reason people in Sweden are rather “cold” towards strangers.
1941: Stockholm decided to build the controversial underground/metro transportation, which was realized during 1950-1978. To support the massive project for a small town, impressive strategies were made in cooperation with housing municipalities and private contractors. It finally became an integrated transportation system for the whole Stockholm Greater Area together with buses, trams, trains and even one boat trip until nowadays.
1954: Vallingby, the first “ABC town” was built. The ABC town was to resolve housing shortage, but at the same time to make the underground station being benefited to the max. Subway and mass transportation was the main transportation but cars were increasing at that time so Stockholm built highways.
1965-1974: One million program houses were promoted to provide solution for the housing shortage. Mainly it was promoted for multi-family houses/apartments but later in 1970’s changed to a promotion for single family housing in larger less concentrated areas. In this spirit, buses as public transportation came to play while cars continued to increase.
1986: The Sami flag was recognized followed by the establishment of the Sami parliament in 1993.
2009: Swedish language was officially declared as the national language (Pretty late right!)
2010: The marriage of the Crown Princess Victoria (daughter of current king Karl XVI Gustaf) with Prince Daniel which was a personal trainer and owner of a gym before.
2012: Princess Estelle the daughter of the Crown Prince and Princess was born and was baptized just a week ago