For the past week or so, I’ve been emailing with Sven-Jesper and Simon from the band Sverige (which means Sweden in Swedish). They apparently kind of stole the band name from a friend of theirs who wanted his band to be called Sverige, but who (fortunately) was unable to convince his bandmates.
There’s also a political side to the name as Sven-Jesper writes in an email that, “it felt important to us in a way to be able to use that name in a context that can be described as the opposite to SD’s [Sweden Democrats] Sweden.” Looking at the Sweden described by the country’s Second Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, über-Sweden Democrat Björn Söder, it’s easy to get Sverige’s point. When Björn dreams of museums of local history and Vikings, Sverige’s “Gömstället” wraps up Swedish youth culture with melancholic pop.
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