A small grain in a big world
Sweden – with its 9.5 million inhabitants, corresponding to 0.15 per cent of the world population – is a Nordic country that is a tiny little grain in the big, big world. But the stubborn descendants of the ancient Vikings have left quite a lot of tracks in the history of science, industry, culture and politics. Let’s start with a few of the big guys: Carl von Linné created the foundations of modern botany with his systematic survey of plants. Everybody seems to be complaining about the Swedish scientist Anders Celsius; the weather is either too hot or too cold – measured in degrees Celsius, not degrees Centigrade! The chemist C W von Scheele gave us knowledge about oxygen and other elements, the industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel created the formula of dynamite and he also established the Nobel foundation, which awards the most respected scientific and literature prizes in the world. Relatives of Gustaf Dahlén find his name at high sea – many lighthouses are named after the inventor of the automatic light mechanism.

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Mining & Tunnelling - Rich with minerals
Mining has historically been of great importance in Sweden, since the bedrock is rich with minerals such as iron, copper, silver and gold. These resources – especially copper – helped Sweden build a significant military power in the 17th century. Sweden has a long history of mining and metal refining, stretching back more than a thousand years. The metal ore and other mineral resources, ?and knowledge about how to use them, have been major factors in building the prosperity the country enjoys today.

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Environmental Technology - The green paradigm
Sweden claims to be a nation well aware of environmental issues and the conditions of a sustainable society. Historically, Sweden has proved to be a pioneer in many fields, for example introducing mandatory catalyst technology for passenger cars in the seventies, acting strongly to ban DDT, PCB and dioxin emissions and promoting recycling of metals, paper, board, glass and plastic products. Sweden has also introduced standards for organic food (KRAV etc.) at a very early stage. Now the focus is on renewable energy sources, but Sweden still has to catch up with the leading countries such as Denmark and Germany, for example regarding wind power technology. Bioenergy plants have been a part of the Swedish energy supply system since the eighties and at present there are several large projects going on, for example Fortum Värtan, Brista, Västerås and Örebro. Waste is turned into valuable products – the forest industry by-product tall oil is replacing crude oil for production of diesel fuel.

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