It’s not every day you see a blond, blue-eyed Swede, dressed up as an Easter witch (’Påskkärring’), sitting on NTU campus teaching visitors to draw Easter cards. Most likely it would not have happened if it weren’t for Sweden Day!

The main purpose of Sweden Day is to strengthen the exchange between Sweden and Singapore – on all levels. To really achieve this goal, it isn’t enough to just give out materials from Swedish universities, or verbally explain what it’s like to live in Sweden. It takes more than that to attract the busy Singaporean students! Offering a bit of food and sweets never seems to hurt, especially when it’s meatballs, potatoes, lingonberry jam and brown sauce from the Swedish halaal restaurant in Kampong Glam! We also offer cookies, hard bread (‘knäckebröd’) and candy from Sweden.

This year we took it one step further and wanted to really activate our visitors. The event took place the Monday before the Easter holiday and so it seemed natural to have an Easter theme, with activities like the card drawing. And who could have guessed at the incredible reserve of talent hiding amidst these engineering and business students? It turned into an incredible collection of beautiful and unusual Easter cards, some with a thought-provoking cultural mix of styles! Each artist got a bag of Swedish candy as a thank you.

There were also other activities. At the egg painting table the most artistic or creative eggs won prizes from IKEA. There were some amazing creations there as well!

We also had our popular Lucky Draw with prizes from our sponsors. To participate you had to answer some questions about how Swedes celebrate Easter.

The event venue was decorated with Easter twigs (‘Påskris’) with colorful feathers, little chickens and Easter eggs. Together we created a very cozy atmosphere with visitors sitting down and drawing cards or painting eggs with Swedish music in the background, or talking to the volunteers in blue shirts. Everyone who took part in making this event possible should be very proud of the results! And we hope that all our visitors were happy with the experience. Let’s see what next semester will bring!

Another Sweden Day has passed, and with it another successful Lucky Draw! This year the Lucky Draw was a bit more of a challenge. The contestants had to answer questions about how Swedes celebrate Easter; a good excuse to go around and read the information posters or ask the volonteers. Everyone did very well! Perhaps we made it too easy? :)

We are extremely grateful for the wonderful prizes given by our sponsors: the food and drink from Café Fika, the beautiful calenders from Prints, the gift certificates from Style:Nordic, the notebooks, travel locks, etc. from SAS and the various gifts from the Karolinska Institute.

We thank them for their contribution and for helping make Sweden Day an extraordinary event. Tack så mycket!

The next Sweden Day event is drawing near! See the poster below.

As usual we will present information and brochures from around 20 Swedish universities, and both Swedish exchange students and Singaporeans who have studied in Sweden will be present to answer questions about Sweden and how it is to study there. Everyone is welcome, whether they’re just curious about Sweden or if they already have a planned exchange.

The event will take place on April 18 at the School of Biological Sciences Lobby at NTU. This is just before Easter, hence the theme of the event. We will have several Easter-related activities, like painting Easter eggs and going on an egg hunt (with prizes!). You can also do what all Swedish children do on Good Friday, which is to dress up as a ‘påskkärring’, an ‘Easter witch’, and get your hands on some yummy (and exotic) Swedish candy after painting us an Easter card!

Besides this we will also have a Lucky Draw, with prizes from Prints, SAS, Style:Nordic and Fika! But to participate you need to answer our questions on the quirky ways in which Swedes celebrate Easter. And, how could it be Sweden Day without some good food? Of course we will let you sample meatballs and ‘saft’, cookies and cake!

An exchange student asked: Why does Sweden have a Day? What’s so special about Sweden in Singapore? The question was probably also provoked by the fact that everyone claims that half of the exchange students at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) are Swedish (though that is a slight over-exaggeration, it’s only about 10%). Certainly there is some reason behind the number of exchanges taking place between the two countries, but whatever the cause, it might be that Swedish students simply fall in love with Singapore, and Singaporean exchange students fall in love with Sweden. At Sweden Day we all come together, sacrificing our time and energy to make it happen, sharing our experiences, and spreading the love.

Sweden Day began back in 2006 on the initiative of Professor Sven Pettersson from Karolinska Institutet (KI). It has grown to become an anticipated biyearly event at the National University of Singapore (NUS), but this semester it was also held at NTU for the first time. Event manager Hanna Manneby, working on behalf of KI coordinated a troupe of about 40 students, both on exchange from Sweden and Singaporeans who had been on exchange to Sweden, as they informed about Swedish Universities and life in Sweden, offered gingerbread cookies and held the Swedish Lucky Draw. Besides eager and informative students in blue and yellow T-shirts representatives from the Swedish Embassy including His Excellency ambassador Mr Ingemar Dolfe, Karolinska Institutet led by President Professor Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson as well as education representatives from NUS, NTU and A*STAR respectively were present to answer questions.

This year the Sweden Day was made even more special on account of it being the 200^th anniversary of the Karolinska Institutet. Two interesting lectures were held by KI Professor Emeritus Arne Ljungqvist, a world class leading expert on doping in Sports for over 40 years and the Dean of research at KI Professor Martin Ingvar.. The bi-centennial festivities were crowned by tailor made KI 200 year Birthday cakes given both at NUS and NTU. These cakes gave a nice finish following the delicious meatballs and lingonberry jam catered by Fika Café of Singapore at NTU.

So how can we sum up our experience from Sweden Day? For one, though it was hectic and nervous before Sweden Day, we all already miss the bustle of the event. Secondly, the people we met on Sweden Day – both Singaporeans who have been on exchange to Sweden and those dreaming about it – made some Swedes incredibly homesick. Everybody had lots of great stories to tell and made even native Swedes want to go back home to experience Sweden!

So if you are staying in Singapore and feel like taking a quick break “in Sweden” you will get another chance at enjoying the great company of the dedicated students and the enthusiastic, hard-working organizers behind this enjoyable event. We hope to see you all next year!

/The SwedenDay group

As always, the Swedish Lucky Draw was one the most popular elements at SwedenDay.

We felt honored and proud to present the fabulous gifts from Style:Nordic and Cafe Fika who has been with us from the start, as well as Prints and Make Up Store that joined in this year. We warmly welcomed the newcomers Karolinska Institutet, JBT Food tech and SAS. 

We would hereby like to say a big Thank You to all our great sponsors! You make us and our visitors happy! :)

Tack så mycket!!

Fotograf: Sara Norling

On the 30^th of March it was once again time for the popular student event SwedenDay, at National University of Singapore (NUS). Swedish exchange students led by event manager Hanna Manneby, had a busy day informing curios local and international students about Sweden and Swedish Universities as well as entertaining the crowd with Lucky Draw, music, a Scandinavian fashion show, speeches, cookies and lemonade sampling and much more.

It was the fourth year in a row this event was held at NUS, one of the three big Universities which each year welcome Swedish exchange students to Singapore. The renowned Swedish University Karolinska Institute is the founder of SwedenDay, which is a voluntary project held twice a year, once every semester. However 14 different Swedish universities were represented during the day and the Swedish embassy answered general questions about Sweden. This spring 20 Swedish exchange students and couple of locals from both NUS and Nanyang Technical University (NTU) collaborated and planned the event during the first two months of the semester. We were proud to have grand international and Swedish companies such as StyleNordic, Fika Cafe, Prints, MakeUpStore, Toni&Guy and Volvo sponsoring the event.

“It is amazing to promote Sweden to the students here in Singapore. Sweden is a very attractive alternative for the Asian students and you can tell that they are truly interested and know a lot   about Sweden when they ask questions” says Mona Johansson from Chalmers University of Technology. She has just got changed from the fashion show outfit to a bright blue t-shirt with “SwedenDay” printed in yellow on the chest. Among the interested crowd, busy sampling “Swedish Dream cookies” we find Wee LimChan, a third year student at Biomedical science, NUS: “I think that  Sweden together with the rest of Scandinavia are world leading when it comes to BioTech and to go there for an exchange would be an awesome experience! Though I have heard it is really cold in the wintertime so I´ll better buy a warmer jacket if I get approved”.

Michaela Asp, from KTH /Royal Institute of Technology, tells us that “The students here know for sure that it is cold in Sweden, but that it can be around 25-30 Celsius during the summer and that you can go for a swim in the middle of the capital is something that few of them know about”. In Singapore the Swedish students really enjoy the warm climate and beautiful weather. Singapore does not only offer top world ranked Universities, but being a true Asian hub, the whole of South East Asia is just around the corner which together with excellent studies makes the time in Singapore an amazing experience and a memory for life!

Join us on Facebook! "Singaporeans love Sweden" is the name of the group, but as a Swede who loves Sinagpore you're also welcomed!

Get advice on how to learn Swedish, What to study in Sweden, When is the best time to go, find new Friends, and much much more.

Moving from our usual spot at the Science department SwedenDay was held at Plaza@YIH this spring. Karolinska Institute is the founder and main sponsor of SwedenDay yet we are providing Singaporeans with information from no less then 14 Swedish Universities/educational institutions. Present at NUS we had Swedish exchange students from seven Swedish universities and quite a number of locals showed up to talk about there time in Sweden or inquire about further studies.

We started the day with a very popular Fiskedamm (Swedish Fish Pond) where we handed out goodiebags values $ 25-55. The crowed stayed on to sample cookies and get some more information until we kicked of a fantastic fashion show by Style:Nordic.

Throughout the day the Swedish Embassy answered all kinds of questions about sweden and we all enjoyed the Swedish music and picture slides on stage. In a small marketing study conducted by SwedenDay we got interesting suggestions for upcoming events and everybody who would still be in Singapore answered that they would like to visit SwedenDay again, next semester. So keep an eye out - next event will be held in October 2010. A very warm welcome then - and a big thank you for this semester!!