Willamette World News

My name is Cajsa Nolskog and I’m one of the international students at Willamette this semester. I’m originally from Skövde, Sweden, but have lived in Norrköping the last year and a half before coming to Salem. I take every chance I get to live abroad, so I lived in a couple of places around the […]

I’ll begin with a brief introduction. My name is Paulina Scapigliata Ludwig Torreblanca Reyes Rojas Re… And the list goes on. But to keep this short and sweet, I’ll resign to just Paulina for now. Although some of you probably know me as Candice from Iowa but that’s a whole other (drunken) story. I hail […]

It seems like not so long ago I stepped out of one of those Willamette vans. It was late and I had barely made it into the country because I had forgotten one of my visas at home. I hadn’t slept for at least 30 hours but I still managed to feel the excitement of […]

Biodiversity is something I’ve been really fascinated with ever since I came to the US. It’s crazy that there are so many different animals and flowers that I’ve never even seen before. One good example of that is last weekend at Lu’au where the decorations were full of tropical flowers you only see as plastic […]

Every time I’ve talked to people here about food they have almost always mentioned Swedish meatballs and lutfisk. It’s kind of fun to hear other people talk about this but I figured that I should dig a little deeper into the Swedish food culture for you all. First off, we do love Swedish meatballs. But […]

My experiences here in the US when it comes to sports have been very different. In Sweden, the biggest sports are soccer, ice hockey and betting on horses, while here it seems like football and basketball take the lead. When I first arrived here in Salem, I was really excited to see what the sports […]

In Sweden, Valentine’s Day is celebrated almost exactly like it is here in the United States. The exception is that we don’t ask each other to be “My Valentine.” Valentine’s Day didn’t come to Sweden until the 1960’s, which was the beginning of the Americanization of the Swedish traditions. Something we usually do though is […]

Welcome back everybody! I hope everyone had a great break. My break was good but very stressful and a lot of cold weather. As you all know I’m from Sweden and therefore should be used to the cold and the snow, but I must say that I was not prepared when I arrived in upstate […]

A while ago I had a film class in Sweden where my teacher asked the American students in the class if they knew who Stellan Skarsgård was? Everyone said no. This is when we all realized that people in other countries don’t always know about the celebrities in your country. They might have seen the […]

Something that exists in Nordic mythology is the creature called “Nattmaran.” This creature was believed to have come in the form of a woman and would sneak into the bedroom at night through a keyhole. It would then sit on the man or woman’s chest and this would make them feel like they were being […]

It was only recently that Halloween ( in Sweden we call it Allhelgnonaafton) came to be celebrated in Sweden. It started 1995 and even now so many years later we still don’t celebrate it exactly the same way the US does. Sure there are carved pumpkins, costumes and scary decorations in orange and black coverings […]

My name is Martina Eriksson and I was born and raised in a very small town in the south of Sweden, called Olofström. After high school I studied art and the English language for a couple of years and when I was 21 I decided to apply to a university in Sweden. In June this […]

Here are some Swedish youtube links, as swedish as it gets, enjoy!!

Sweden is a constitutional monarchy, which means that king Carl XVI Gustaf Bernadotte is head of state but his power is limited to official and ceremonial function. After the 2006 election the Alliance, four center-right parties, were able to form a government in Sweden. Since 1932 Sweden has been mainly governed by the Social Democratic […]

According to the latest development report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Sweden is the 9th most prosperous developed nation. The annual table showing countries’ national output adjusted for the purchasing power of their currencies, published by the OECD, placed Sweden as number nine.

Sweden has adopted the American tradition of Valentine’s Day and the procedures are very much the same; sending cards, chocolate or flowers to your loved one. If chocolate on the 14th is a new tradition in Sweden, an older tradition to keep fat, warm and happy in the Swedish February climate is the Fettisdagen.

Swedes are fascinated with the United States of America. There are several organizations in Sweden aiming to a sustained and further development of a stronger relationship between the two countries.

My name is Johanna and I am an international student from Sweden. I study to become a Psychologist at the University of Linköping but I am very patriotic to my hometown Göteborg on the west coast of Sweden. Since I am not going home for the winter break I cannot help but thinking longingly at […]

In advance, I apologize for not writing on a more fun subject like Christmas and the holidays in Sweden maybe, and it is probably because I think that these issues are more important and and also because I don’t celebrate Christmas. For reading about the holidays and traditions in Sweden, check out Johanna’s post where […]

How foolish and productive is the rhetoric used by the Bush administration but also from other sources like Sarkozy? How well does it really deal with the issue of Iran that the “West” is now trying to solve? All of these talks are so weird for me to hear because I can see behind the […]

Many people who think about Sweden think about all the good stuff: hospitality of the country towards immigrants, free health care, free education including college, the most democratic country in the world and similar thoughts. Although one might get entitled to many of the Swedish societies benefits, there is evidence that shows it might be […]

The media frenzy around the arrival of the high profile Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the United Sates for a United Nations General Assembly meeting and a question and answer event at Columbia University, invited by the University’s president Lee Bollinger is an important issue. There are two matters that I want to highlight here. […]

An unusual issue has been happening in Sweden for over a month now; it has put Sweden on the list of Muslim-hating countries in the eyes of many Muslims. The issue is about freedom of speech and where the line between one’s freedom of speech in a democratic country is in regard to criticizing issues […]

Hi, My name is Morteza and I’m from Sweden. I am 24 years old, and yes I know, that is old here at Willamette but i manage to cope with my age. I was actually born in Iraq, “moved” to Iran when I was just a few months old, and then sort of “moved” or […]

I’m ending my participation here at World News with bragging a bit about Sweden. According to a new report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Sweden is the most democratic country in the world and is called a near-perfect democracy. The U.S. is only on ranked on place 17 and maybe has to consider its statement […]