The Old Country Newsletter - Glad Nationaldag!

Your Weekly Swede-ish

Tor Johnson, From Sweden to Sci-Fi Cult Fame

Tor Johnson wasn’t always the hulking mute zombie of Plan 9 from Outer Space. Born Tor Johansson in Sweden in 1903, he immigrated to the U.S. as a young man and first made his mark in professional wrestling under the nickname “The Super Swedish Angel.” With a shaved head, massive frame, and a surprising sense of humor, he soon caught the attention of Hollywood casting directors. Johnson began appearing in films in the 1930s, often as the strongman or villain, and worked steadily for decades. But it was his collaborations with cult director Ed Wood in the 1950s that made him an underground icon. Despite playing mostly wordless brutes, Johnson was reportedly soft-spoken, polite, and well-liked offscreen—known to knit between takes. Not many wrestlers end up in sci-fi infamy and Tim Burton biopics, but Tor Johnson never seemed too worried about staying in one genre.

Sweden Urged to Halt International Adoptions After Damning Report

A Swedish government inquiry has delivered a bombshell: international adoptions to Sweden should be stopped entirely. The recommendation comes after revelations of serious misconduct stretching back decades, including cases where children were taken from their birth families under false pretenses and adopted abroad.

Law professor Anna Singer, who led the inquiry, presented the findings on Monday and concluded that Sweden’s international adoption system has repeatedly failed to safeguard children’s rights. “The system has not ensured that all adoptions were in the best interest of the child,” Singer said. “We can’t accept this level of risk in 2025.”

The report follows a series of investigative articles by Dagens Nyheter revealing that children from impoverished families in countries like Chile, China, and Sri Lanka were stolen or wrongfully separated from their parents and adopted into Swedish families—often with the knowledge of authorities.

The inquiry recommends not only a full stop to new international adoptions but also a formal apology from the Swedish state, a national resource center for adoptees, and a €1,300 (15,000 SEK) travel grant for those seeking their origins.

Critics of the proposed ban, including Sweden’s largest adoption agency, argue that in some cases international adoption may still be in a child’s best interest. But the government appears poised to act. Social Services Minister Camilla Waltersson Grönvall acknowledged the state’s past failings and said the inquiry will now be sent out for formal review.

About 60,000 people in Sweden were adopted from abroad, mostly between the 1970s and 1990s.

Would you like to feel closer to Sweden? A perfect way to do that would be to have a look at Swedish broadcasts, either current or past. SVT Play is an online streaming service provided by Sveriges Television (SVT), the Swedish national public television broadcaster.

To watch it, one has to be in Sweden – or have access to a VPN provider that can connect to a remote server located in Sweden. Like NordVPN, which sponsors this segment of the newsletter.

By using NordVPN, you can access what SVT Play has to offer – including current news, documentaries about emigrants, live broadcasts from nature events, and much more – by simply connecting to a server in Sweden. Follow the link here to get 74 % off for your first two years and three months (!) of usage. By doing so, you also help support the distribution of this newsletter.

In recent months, multiple Swedish unions have issued strike notices as labor disputes intensify:

• IF Metall vs. Tesla: IF Metall’s strike against Tesla in Sweden has been ongoing since October 27, 2023, making it one of the longest labor disputes in the country in a century. The conflict is based on Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective agreement for its Swedish employees. The strike affects Tesla’s service centers and workshops in Sweden. Tesla has continued operations by hiring new employees to replace those on strike.

• Swedish Dockworkers’ Union has announced a strike in all Swedish ports. The union demands stricter limits on the use of staffing agencies, stronger negotiation rights, and better protection for union representatives. This follows the dismissal of the union’s vice chair, Erik Helgeson, from his job at the Port of Gothenburg.

• The Municipal Workers’ Union (Kommunal) threatens a strike starting June 16 at 07:00, involving 50,000 employees, if no agreement is reached with the employers and Almega Vårdföretagarna. The union demands equal overtime pay for part-time and full-time employees.

• The Swedish Electricians’ Union has issued a strike notice covering about 750 electricians at major companies like Eitech, Bravida, and Assemblin in several cities across Sweden. The notice includes a complete work stoppage and task blockade.

• Unionen, Sweden’s largest white-collar union, has also filed a strike notice targeting Systembolaget (the government-owned retail monopoly for alcoholic beverages), following failed collective agreement negotiations. On June 5, the Academic Unions—Sveriges Ingenjörer, Akavia, and Akademikerförbundet SSR—joined in, warning of a strike starting June 10 unless a new collective agreement is reached.

According to Anders Kjellberg, Professor Emeritus at Lund University and a leading researcher on the Swedish labor market model, “Strikes happen when necessary—for example, in the ongoing Tesla conflict. In Sweden, we have neither state-mandated minimum wages nor universally applicable collective agreements, like in Finland. That makes the right to strike especially important when trying to reach agreements with employers who resist signing them. Strike notices also serve as a pressure tool and often don’t lead to an actual strike. A key part of the Swedish model is that it remains peaceful.”