40 Fun Facts About Sweden or Switzerland

Which city on the River Aare, said to be named after a bear, is the seat of Switzerland's government?

Bern was made the federal city in 1848 and is the capital in practice, although several other Swiss cities are larger.

Which furniture chain's name joins its founder's initials to those of a farm and village in Sweden?

IKEA was founded in 1943, when Kamprad was 17, and its last two letters stand for Elmtaryd, the farm where he was born, and Agunnaryd, his home village.

Which currency does Switzerland share with neighbouring Liechtenstein, having stayed outside the euro?

Franc notes and coins are also legal tender in Campione d'Italia, an Italian exclave that is entirely surrounded by Swiss territory.

Which Swedish pop quartet won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with a song named after a battle?

ABBA won with Waterloo, sung in English instead of Swedish, and went on to sell more than 150 million records.

Which block-building game, first written by Swedish programmer Markus Persson, did Microsoft buy for $2.5 billion?

Minecraft is developed by the Swedish company Mojang Studios, and Persson, known to players as Notch, wrote the first version in the Java programming language.

Which aid movement, co-founded by Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, uses Switzerland's flag with its colours switched?

The Red Cross emblem was described in the 1906 Geneva Convention as the Swiss colours reversed, a compliment to the country where the first convention was signed in 1864.

Which Swedish carmaker introduced the modern three-point seat belt in 1959, then made the design free to use?

Volvo hired the inventor Nils Bohlin, who proved the belt's worth with a study of 28,000 road accidents in Sweden.

Which chocolate bar, created in Switzerland, comes as a row of joined triangular prisms said to echo an Alpine peak?

Toblerone blends the surname of its co-founder Theodor Tobler with torrone, the Italian word for nougat.

Which capital city of Sweden stretches across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea?

Stockholm is said to have been founded by Birger Jarl to protect Sweden from invasions by sea, and its central islands run on into a wider archipelago.

Which music streaming service did Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon found in Sweden in 2006 as an answer to piracy?

Spotify opened in several European markets in 2008, reached the United States three years later and joined the New York Stock Exchange in 2018.

Which pyramid-shaped peak overlooks the Swiss town of Zermatt and stands on the border with Italy?

The Matterhorn was first climbed in 1865 by a party led by Edward Whymper, but four of the seven climbers died in a fall on the way down.

Which 15-year-old began a solo school strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament in 2018?

Greta Thunberg inspired the worldwide Fridays for Future movement, and a year later Time magazine named her its Person of the Year.

Which legendary crossbow marksman from the Swiss canton of Uri is said to have shot an apple off a child's head?

William Tell was aiming at his own son, and in the legend he goes on to assassinate Albrecht Gessler, a tyrannical official of the Habsburg dukes.

Which invention, patented in 1867, earned Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel the fortune behind the Nobel Prizes?

Dynamite was easier and safer to handle than unstable nitroglycerin, and Nobel left the money it made him to a foundation that pays for the prizes.

What unusual shape is Switzerland's national flag, setting it apart from almost every other country's banner?

Square is the shape fixed in Swiss law, although ships and boats registered in Switzerland fly a rectangular version instead.

Which super-strong, red-haired girl with a pet monkey did Swedish author Astrid Lindgren invent for a sick daughter?

Pippi Longstocking got her name from Lindgren's daughter Karin, who had asked for a get-well story, and the books have since been translated into dozens of languages.

Which young heroine of a Johanna Spyri novel is sent to live in the care of a grandfather in the Swiss Alps?

Heidi is five years old when the story begins, and the novel, published in two parts, became one of the best-selling books ever written.

Which tennis player from Basel, Switzerland, won 20 major singles titles before retiring at the 2022 Laver Cup?

Roger Federer worked as a ball boy at his home city's Swiss Indoors tournament in 1992 and 1993, long before becoming the first man to win 20 majors.

Which Swedish word names a set break for coffee with buns or pastries, treated in Sweden as a social institution?

Fika grew out of a coffee habit that reached Sweden in the 17th century, and the country now ranks among the world's top coffee drinkers per person.

Which dish of melted cheese and wine, eaten from a communal pot, did the Swiss Cheese Union promote in the 1930s?

Fondue was pushed as Switzerland's national dish as a way to sell more cheese, and diners dip bread into it with long-stemmed forks.

Which wireless technology, named after a 10th-century Danish king, began as a project at Ericsson in Lund, Sweden?

Bluetooth started as a codename, proposed by an engineer who had come across a picture of the runestone of the Viking ruler Harald Bluetooth.

Which physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989?

CERN was established in 1954 and also runs the Large Hadron Collider, whose tunnel lies 100 metres underground.

Which organisation did Sweden join in 2024, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

NATO membership ended a long policy of staying out of military blocs, although Swedish troops had already served under the alliance's command in Afghanistan.

Which organisation did Switzerland join only in 2002, despite hosting one of its major offices in Geneva?

The United Nations runs its Geneva office from the Palace of Nations, a complex originally built for its forerunner, the League of Nations.

What do people in Sweden traditionally raise and then circle in ring dances at Midsummer celebrations?

A maypole is usually called a midsummer pole in Sweden, and one of the ring dances has everyone jumping like frogs.

Which giant dog breed did the hospice on an Alpine pass between Switzerland and Italy raise for rescue work?

St. Bernard dogs never carried barrels of brandy, say the hospice's monks, who trace that image to an 1820 painting by Edwin Landseer.

Which food and drink giant, headquartered in the Swiss town of Vevey, owns Kit Kat, Smarties and Maggi?

Nestlé takes its name from Henri Nestlé, who developed a milk-based baby food in 1867 and soon began marketing it.

Which astronomer from Uppsala, Sweden, proposed a temperature scale in 1742 that put the boiling point of water at zero?

Anders Celsius marked freezing at 100, so the scale used today is his idea turned upside down and later renamed in his honour.

In which tiny state do Swiss Guards in striped Renaissance uniforms protect a ruler their corps has served since 1506?

Vatican City's guards must be unmarried Swiss Catholic men aged 19 to 30 who have completed basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces.

Which Swedish warship sank minutes into a maiden voyage in 1628 and was salvaged largely intact 333 years later?

Vasa had sailed only about 1,300 metres when a wind barely stronger than a breeze tipped the unstable ship over, and millions have since visited the hull.

Which fastener did Swiss engineer George de Mestral devise after burs clung to a dog's fur on a hunting trip?

Velcro was turned down by industry leaders when de Mestral first took the idea to Lyon, which was then a centre of weaving.

What do shoppers in Sweden buy from Systembolaget, a government-owned chain of stores with an age limit of 20?

Strong alcohol, meaning any drink above 3.5% by volume, is a state retail monopoly, loosened only in 2025 when small producers were allowed limited sales to visitors.

Which plastic watch brand was founded in Switzerland in 1983 as a response to cheap quartz rivals?

Swatch arrived during the quartz crisis, when inexpensive battery-powered models were undercutting European makers of mechanical timepieces.

Which animal is the Dala figure, a carved and painted wooden statuette that became a symbol of Sweden?

Horse statuettes of this kind originated in the province of Dalarna, where they were carved as toys for children before becoming a national symbol.

Which typeface, designed near Basel in the 1950s, was soon renamed with the Latin word for Swiss?

Helvetica was first sold as Neue Haas Grotesk, and the new name also drew on Switzerland's reputation as a centre of modern graphic design.

From which material is a famous hotel in the village of Jukkasjärvi, northern Sweden, rebuilt each year?

Snow and ice blocks are taken from the nearby Torne River, and when spring comes the whole hotel, chairs and beds included, melts back into it.

Which language of the canton of Grisons joins German, French and Italian as a national language of Switzerland?

Romansh has had that status since 1938 and descends from the spoken Latin that soldiers, merchants and officials brought to the region after 15 BC.

Which marshal of Napoleon was elected Crown Prince of Sweden in 1810 and founded the Swedish royal house?

Jean Bernadotte owed his surprise election to Baron Carl Otto Mörner, an obscure courtier, and went on to reign as Charles XIV John.

Cuckoo clocks, long linked with Switzerland, were popularised and exported worldwide from which German region?

The Black Forest made the clocks world-famous from the mid-1850s, although the first known description of one was written by an Augsburg merchant in 1629.

Which Swedish botanist, a professor at Uppsala, formalised the two-part Latin names still given to every species?

Carl Linnaeus was still describing plants and animals with long Latin phrases on his expedition to Lapland, because he had not yet worked out the system.