Sweden

A great power that gave it up and built something else instead. Sweden broke out of the Kalmar Union under Gustav Vasa in 1523 and became the dominant force in northern Europe in the seventeenth century, when Gustavus Adolphus intervened in the Thirty Years War and made the Baltic effectively a Swedish lake. That empire ended with Charles XII's defeat by Russia at Poltava in 1709 and was formally over by 1721. Sweden then lost Finland to Russia in 1809 and has not fought a war since 1814, the longest unbroken peace of any country. Neutrality through both world wars was maintained with compromises, including iron ore sales to Germany and troop transit, that are still debated. Industrialisation came late and fast, and mass emigration to America took perhaps a fifth of the population in the nineteenth century. The Social Democrats governed for most of the twentieth century and built the folkhemmet, a welfare model widely copied and much argued over. Olof Palme was assassinated in 1986 and the case took thirty-four years to close. Sweden joined NATO in 2024, ending the neutrality. Stockholm is the capital. The country has about 10.6 million people and is the largest in northern Europe by area. Swedish is official, with five recognised minority languages including Sami. Around two-thirds of the land is forest. The Nobel prizes other than peace are awarded in Stockholm. Ikea, Volvo, Ericsson and Spotify are Swedish. Allemansratten, the right of public access to private land, is a legal principle with few equivalents.

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