The Insider's Guide to Moving and Living in Sweden is a free book

The book consists of two parts - Sweden essential and a local guide for your city. Do you want to make your own local guide for your city? Check this out.

Sweden essentials

An introduction to Sweden and the people with a DNA built by the freedom to roam and digitalisation. The numbers, the traditions and the food. Swedish history, all you need to know about the sustainable identity of Sweden.

The Insider's Guide to Moving and Living in Sweden

Local guide to Helsingborg

This is your local guide to life in Helsingborg, in the south of Sweden. Helsingborg really is a city of beatuiful contrasts. Here, modern architecture stands alongside medieval buildings, blending innovation with tradition. With stunning sea views, lush farmland and green forests, Helsingborg is a city that delights the senses.

Local guide to Helsingborg

Local guide to Linköping

This is your local guide to life in East Sweden, Östergötland. It is an area where you can design a life that suits your needs and dreams. It is an area where tech is as important as the archipelago, the forests, the agriculturual landscape and the diversity in everything in between.

Local guide to Linköping

Excerpt: Swedish workplaces and Nordic values

From the The Insider’s Guide to Moving and Living in Sweden

Patrick: The problem solvers and explorers who moved to Sweden

“The Swedish workplace is a very consensus driven environment. It may seem quite strange at first that so much time is dedicated to decision making, even concerning small matters. Over time you will learn that things do move forward and Swedish businesses have a proven record of being pioneers in many fields. Buckle down, listen and learn and you will find a way of understanding the Nordic values and processes that will make things a lot easier during the settling down phase.

Life outside of work is very organised, planned and compartmentalised. Swedes can tell you where they will be during each individual week of the year for the next five years with a high degree of accuracy. It is truly amazing to experience this being played out by an entire nation. Spontaneity is not really a ‘thing’. Which also means that many who move to Sweden also find it almost impossible to have a relationship or even an experience with Swedes outside of the workplace. However, if they let you into their circle, they are very warm and gracious hosts.”

Patrick Hamilton Walsh, Co-Founder, Glotalco

Swedes in General

There are over 10 million people in Sweden. You will meet quite a lot of different types of Swedish people, and they are taught not to do what we are about to do now: generalise.

I am good at English. Still – it is really important to make an effort to learn Swedish.

Learning Swedish is essential. We do not expect your Swedish to be perfect in any way. When you decide to stay in Sweden you will notice that language is key. If you let us – we are keen to help you. We have already been through the lagom and fika and semla, and we would like you to learn the rest as well.

Even though we consider ourselves to be brilliant in English, and are happy to speak English to you – you need to make the effort of learning Swedish in order to truly integrate. Learning Swedish is key to understand and to be able to navigate through our society. If you try your very best with learning Swedish we will find you lagom and try our very best to make you feel at home. However, don’t forget to tell us that you would like to practise Swedish – otherwise we will take every opportunity to practise English.
A bit contradictory, ursäkta!

An important part of our DNA is parental leave and combining career and kids. Your Swedish colleagues will stay home for VAB.

An important part of the Swedish DNA is our 480 days of paid parental leave, paid out by Försäkringskassan. Coupled with five weeks paid vacation, it gives us the opportunity to enjoy parenthood and family life without taking away the privilege of having a career from any parent.

We are proud to be able to grant women and men the access to both being a parent and having a career. Couples are encouraged to share parental leave as equal as possible in order for children to be able to spend time with both their parents.

Then again – career and small children can be a challenge when parental leave has come to an end and therefore we have VAB. It’s short for vård av barn which means that a parent has the right to stay at home and take care of their little ones when needed. Flues, colds or chicken-pox are inevitable when children are young. Parents can stay at home getting paid from Försäkringskassan if their children are not well enough to attend daycare or school.

If you are not sure whether you are entitled to parental leave or VAB, check with the Social Insurance Agency, Försäkringskassan: forsakringskassan.se

We address each other by first name. Yes, that’s true. Let’s use Anna Andersson since it’s a combination of the most popular first name and the most common surname. Anna Andersson might be a miss, mrs, or whatever – we don’t care, to us, she will be just Anna. We rarely use titles to address anyone apart from members of the royal family or an extraordinary old and stubborn aunt.

Cash is not a Swedish king thing. We are extraordinary digital when it comes to money transactions, banking and finance. In fact, we have come to a point where most shops stopped handling cash. We pay by card, Apple Pay or the Swedish invention Swish. It is almost impossible to manage without Swish since it is used in shops, restaurants, fruit or flea markets as well as to transfer money between individuals.

We are outdoor people by heart. You will learn more about Swedish outdoor life and turning your face towards the sun in winter if you continue reading.

It may not be our first step, but in time we might invite you to our home. Be careful not to enter with your shoes on though – when invited to a Swedish home, shoes go off as soon as you enter.

You’ll probably see a pile of shoes for different outdoor activities next to the front door – put your own there as well and trust us when we ask you to feel at home.


The Insider’s Guide to Moving and Living in Sweden is a part of Switch to Sweden

Switch to Sweden is all about learning, connecting, and finding the perfect international talent for companies in Sweden. We are here to let the talent matches begin!

By 2024, we will need more than 70.000 awesome talents to work in tech industries. Yes, we know it seems hard to achieve. But we also know we count with some of the most innovative and inspiring companies around the world to attract new talents.

How can we help solve this?
Here we introduce our innovative-driven solution:
The talent matchmaking tool.

Based on skills and motivation factors we match companies and international academic talents who are already in Sweden. Yes, we find you a perfect match! So get ready to give your big first impression in a short meet and greet.

Download The Insider's Guide to Moving and Living in Sweden here

The book consists of two parts - Sweden essential and a local guide for your city.

Sweden essentials

An introduction to Sweden and the people with a DNA built by the freedom to roam and digitalisation. The numbers, the traditions and the food. Swedish history, all you need to know about the sustainable identity of Sweden.

The Insider's Guide to Moving and Living in Sweden

Local guide to Linköping

This is your local guide to life in East Sweden, Östergötland. It is an area where you can design a life that suits your needs and dreams. It is an area where tech is as important as the archipelago, the forests, the agriculturual landscape and the diversity in everything in between.

Local guide to Linköping

Interested in doing a local edition of The Insider's Guide for your city?

Check this out.