5 Swedish people who are not actually Swedish

What is a Swede? Someone who is tall, has blond hair and blue eyes and was born and lives in the country?
Definitions of nationality have never been that easy.
In an attempt to quantify immigration into the country, the Statistics Board came with a two tier system which attempts to differentiate between those who were born in and outside of Sweden.
In this definition a ”new Swede” is a Swedish citizen who themselves is born, or whose parents are born, outside Sweden.
Here’s a look at a number of well-known Swedes whose lives express the complexity of Swedish national identity:
1. Alfred Nobel
Born in Sweden to Swedish parents, the inventor of dynamite actually lived the majority of his life abroad. He travelled a lot for his work, and in the latter part of his life was based in Paris, France.
2. Saint Lucia
Sweden is the only Nordic country to celebrate Saint Lucia on 13 December as part of its Christmas celebrations. The modern interpretation of her story came to Sweden from Germany in the 1700s. It bares little resemblance to the original Lucia, whose name means light, who was an Italian women martyred in c 300 AD.
3. Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Arguably Sweden’s most famous living sportsman, Zlatan is a new Swede born in Malmö to Serbo-Croat parents. His attitude of seeing himself as greater than the team-as-a-whole goes against the core Swedish value of jante lagen and he has not lived in Sweden since 2001.
4. ABBA
ABBA are one of the best selling pop-groups of all time, but partly owe that success to singing in a foreign language, English. Their breakthrough came in 1974 when they won an international competition, the European Song Contest, hosted by the English seaside town of Brighton.
5. The Swedish Royal Family
King Carl XVI Gustaf’s mother was German, as is his wife, Queen Silvia. This means Sweden’s entire royal household – the king, the queen and their children – are all new Swedes.
Furthermore, their third child, Princess Madeleine, married an British-American financier, so their three children will also be counted as New Swedes in any statistical analysis of the Swedish population.

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