Sweden Trivia
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119 free Sweden trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
61 free Sweden trivia questions with answers. Sweden is a country of 10 million people that somehow gave the world dynamite, flat-pack furniture, Spotify, ABBA and surströmming. This quiz covers all of it: sixty questions on Stockholm's fourteen islands, Gotland and Lapland, the Vasa kings and Charles XII, the Bernadotte monarchy, the Riksdag, Nobel Prizes and Olof Palme, then Midsummer, fika, Lucia, Systembolaget and the Dala horse, before turning to IKEA, Volvo, H&M, Minecraft, Eurovision wins, Zlatan, Borg, Stenmark and Duplantis. The easy questions ask which fish surströmming is made from and who wrote Pippi Longstocking; the hard ones want the fortress where Charles XII fell, the river the Icehotel is carved from, and which publisher turned down Pippi. It suits anyone planning a trip, brushing up before a pub quiz, or just curious about the place behind the meatballs. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Sweden and its cities, monarchs, companies, artists and athletes, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 119 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Stockholm's centre is spread across how many islands?
14
Stockholm's centre is spread across 14 islands where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic, which is why so many of the city's roads run through tunnels and over bridges.
Q 02Which Swedish city has the largest port in the Nordic countries?
Gothenburg
Gothenburg has the largest port in the Nordic countries. It was founded in 1621 as a largely Dutch trading colony, which is why Dutch engineers laid out its centre around canals, as in Amsterdam.
Q 03What is Sweden's third-largest city?
Malmö
Malmö is Sweden's third-largest city, but it grew up Danish: one of Denmark's biggest towns in the 1400s, it went into a long decline after passing to Sweden in 1658 and losing its Danish trading privileges.
Q 04The Öresund Bridge carries road and rail from Sweden across the strait to which foreign capital?
Copenhagen
Copenhagen. The bridge stops at an artificial island and the last 4 km run through a tunnel, built so that ships keep a clear channel and planes using Copenhagen Airport a clear approach.
Q 05Why did the Swedish Arctic city of Kiruna decide in 2004 to relocate its centre?
Ground subsidence from its iron mine
Ground subsidence from its iron mine is creeping under the old centre, so Kiruna is moving east; in 2025 its 672-tonne church, finished in 1912, was rolled 5 km to the new site in one piece.
Q 06Which is Sweden's largest island?
Gotland
Gotland is Sweden's largest island. The 13th-century wall around its main town, Visby, shut the merchants off from the island's own country traders, and the quarrel broke into civil war in 1288.
Q 07What is the largest lake in Sweden?
Vänern
Vänern is the largest lake in Sweden. It is big enough for seagoing ships, which climb the locks of the Trollhätte Canal from the Kattegat to reach lake ports such as Karlstad.
Q 08What is the highest mountain in Sweden?
Kebnekaise
Kebnekaise is Sweden's highest mountain; its glaciated southern summit has melted so much that since 2018 the ice-free northern summit, about 2,097 metres, has been the higher of the two.
Q 09Sweden's National Day, 6 June, marks the 1523 election of which king?
Gustav Vasa
Gustav Vasa was elected king at Strängnäs on 6 June 1523, ending Danish rule over Sweden; he went on to lead the country into the Protestant Reformation.
Q 10King Gustavus Adolphus was killed at Lützen in 1632 during which war?
Thirty Years'
Thirty Years' War. In the gun smoke and fog at Lützen the king was cut off from his riders and shot; his army fought on and won the battle without him.
Q 11Charles XII's army was crushed by Russia in July 1709 at which battle?
Poltava
Charles XII's army was destroyed at Poltava on 8 July 1709; the king, already wounded in the foot, escaped south and lived in exile in the Ottoman Empire until 1714.
Q 12Charles XII was shot dead in 1718 during which war with Russia?
Great Northern
Great Northern War. Charles XII was shot through the head before Fredriksten fortress; within three years Sweden had made peace, giving up its Baltic provinces and its standing as a great power.
Q 13The reigning Swedish royal house, Bernadotte, was founded by a marshal in the service of which emperor?
Napoleon
Napoleon made Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte a marshal. Elected heir to Sweden's childless king in 1810, Bernadotte then turned on his old master and led an army against him at Leipzig in 1813.
Q 21After the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, the laureates attend a banquet in which building?
The City Hall
The City Hall has hosted the banquet since 1930. The king hands each laureate a medal and diploma at the Concert Hall, then joins about 1,300 guests for dinner, 250 of them students.
Q 22Which Swedish UN Secretary-General died in a 1961 plane crash in Africa?
Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hammarskjöld was flying to ceasefire talks with the leader of Katanga, a breakaway province of the Congo, when his plane came down near Ndola in what is now Zambia.
Q 23Which Swedish prime minister was shot dead on a Stockholm street in February 1986?
Olof Palme
Q 14In 1809 Sweden lost which territory, long its eastern part, to Imperial Russia?
Finland
Finland went to Russia under the Treaty of Fredrikshamn in September 1809. The defeat had already cost King Gustav IV Adolf his throne, in a coup by his own army officers that March.
Q 15A 1994 referendum approved Sweden's entry into which body?
European Union
The European Union. Sweden joined on 1 January 1995, yet when a second referendum came in 2003 its voters turned down the union's single currency.
Q 16Which NATO member held up Sweden's bid for over a year, demanding action against Kurdish groups?
Turkey
Turkey. Its parliament ratified only in January 2024, after Sweden had tightened its anti-terrorism laws; Hungary, the last holdout, followed a month later and Sweden joined that March.
Q 17In 1973 Carl XVI Gustaf succeeded which relative?
His grandfather
His grandfather, Gustaf VI Adolf. His father had died in a 1947 plane crash, and the new king at once dropped the centuries-old style 'King of Sweden, the Goths and the Wends' for plain 'King of Sweden'.
Q 18Which palace on the island of Lovön is the permanent home of Sweden's king and queen?
Drottningholm
Drottningholm, where the king and queen live in the south wing. Its 1760s theatre was left as a storeroom after 1792 and restored in the 1920s; the wooden stage machinery is still worked by hand.
Q 19What is the name of Sweden's 349-seat national parliament?
Riksdag
Riksdag. It had 350 seats until the 1973 election left government and opposition with 175 each; one seat was cut from 1976 so that the chamber could never again split down the middle.
Q 20Alfred Nobel patented which invention in 1867?
Dynamite
Dynamite. An 1864 blast at the family's Stockholm works killed Nobel's younger brother Emil, and Alfred set out to make nitroglycerin safer to handle, soaking it into a porous earth called kieselguhr.
Olof Palme was shot from behind on Sveavägen as he walked home from a cinema with his wife. The only man convicted was later freed on appeal, and the investigation closed in 2020 with the murder unsolved.
Q 24In Sweden, the main Midsummer's Eve celebrations always fall on which day of the week?
Friday
Friday. The official holiday, Midsummer Day, is the Saturday, but the party is the evening before: workplaces and many shops shut, and people leave town to raise a maypole and dance around it.
Q 25The Swedish ritual of fika centres on which drink?
Coffee
Coffee, usually with a bun or pastry on the side. The habit had to survive the state first: from 1756 Sweden's governments banned coffee five separate times, and each ban failed.
Q 26Sweden's candle-crowned processions each 13 December honour which saint?
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia, a martyr from Syracuse in Sicily. Under the old Julian calendar the night before her feast was reckoned the longest of the year, which made her the north's bearer of light.
Q 27Surströmming, infamous for its smell, is a fermented version of which fish?
Herring
Herring from the Baltic. It goes on fermenting inside the sealed tin, so the cans bulge, and in 2006 several big airlines banned them from flights as a possible explosion risk.
Q 28Swedish meatballs are traditionally served with jam made from which berry?
Lingonberry
Lingonberry jam works more like ketchup than a spread: Swedes spoon the tart preserve beside meatballs, pancakes, porridge and black pudding, yet rarely put it on bread.
Q 29Since 1999, Swedes have marked 4 October as a day devoted to which baked treat?
Cinnamon bun
Cinnamon bun. Kanelbullens dag sounds like an old custom, but it was invented in 1999 by Sweden's Home Baking Council as a way to get more people baking at home.
Q 30Which state-owned chain is the only retailer allowed to sell wine, spirits and strong beer in Sweden?
Systembolaget
Systembolaget. Its roots lie in an 1850 scheme in Dalarna to keep the profit from selling alcohol out of private hands, and its shops are barred from offering discounts.