Sweden or Switzerland
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40 free Sweden or Switzerland trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sweden and Switzerland share no border and no language, yet they are mixed up all the time. The names start the same way, both countries are wealthy, orderly and known for keeping out of wars, and both tend to sit near the top of lists of the best places to live. One is a Nordic kingdom on the Baltic, the other an Alpine republic in the middle of Europe. This quiz sorts out which is which. It covers the capitals and the money, the brands and inventions each country gave the world, the food and festivals, the sporting greats and the storybook characters, with every answer explained so the difference sticks. It opens with questions most people can get and keeps a few for travellers and geography fans. Play it before a trip, use it to settle an argument, or print it as a quiz night round on Europe's most confused pair of countries.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city on the River Aare, said to be named after a bear, is the seat of Switzerland's government?
Bern
Bern was made the federal city in 1848 and is the capital in practice, although several other Swiss cities are larger.
Q 02Which furniture chain's name joins its founder's initials to those of a farm and village in Sweden?
IKEA
IKEA was founded in 1943, when Kamprad was 17, and its last two letters stand for Elmtaryd, the farm where he was born, and Agunnaryd, his home village.
Q 03Which currency does Switzerland share with neighbouring Liechtenstein, having stayed outside the euro?
Franc
Franc notes and coins are also legal tender in Campione d'Italia, an Italian exclave that is entirely surrounded by Swiss territory.
Q 04Which Swedish pop quartet won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with a song named after a battle?
ABBA
ABBA won with Waterloo, sung in English instead of Swedish, and went on to sell more than 150 million records.
Q 05Which block-building game, first written by Swedish programmer Markus Persson, did Microsoft buy for $2.5 billion?
Minecraft
Minecraft is developed by the Swedish company Mojang Studios, and Persson, known to players as Notch, wrote the first version in the Java programming language.
Q 06Which aid movement, co-founded by Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, uses Switzerland's flag with its colours switched?
The Red Cross
The Red Cross emblem was described in the 1906 Geneva Convention as the Swiss colours reversed, a compliment to the country where the first convention was signed in 1864.
Q 07Which Swedish carmaker introduced the modern three-point seat belt in 1959, then made the design free to use?
Volvo
Volvo hired the inventor Nils Bohlin, who proved the belt's worth with a study of 28,000 road accidents in Sweden.
Q 08Which chocolate bar, created in Switzerland, comes as a row of joined triangular prisms said to echo an Alpine peak?
Toblerone
Toblerone blends the surname of its co-founder Theodor Tobler with torrone, the Italian word for nougat.
Q 09Which capital city of Sweden stretches across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea?
Stockholm
Stockholm is said to have been founded by Birger Jarl to protect Sweden from invasions by sea, and its central islands run on into a wider archipelago.
Q 10Which music streaming service did Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon found in Sweden in 2006 as an answer to piracy?
Spotify
Spotify opened in several European markets in 2008, reached the United States three years later and joined the New York Stock Exchange in 2018.
Q 11Which pyramid-shaped peak overlooks the Swiss town of Zermatt and stands on the border with Italy?
Matterhorn
The Matterhorn was first climbed in 1865 by a party led by Edward Whymper, but four of the seven climbers died in a fall on the way down.
Q 12Which 15-year-old began a solo school strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament in 2018?
Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg inspired the worldwide Fridays for Future movement, and a year later Time magazine named her its Person of the Year.
Q 13Which legendary crossbow marksman from the Swiss canton of Uri is said to have shot an apple off a child's head?
William Tell
Q 21Which wireless technology, named after a 10th-century Danish king, began as a project at Ericsson in Lund, Sweden?
Bluetooth
Bluetooth started as a codename, proposed by an engineer who had come across a picture of the runestone of the Viking ruler Harald Bluetooth.
Q 22Which physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989?
CERN
CERN was established in 1954 and also runs the Large Hadron Collider, whose tunnel lies 100 metres underground.
Q 23Which organisation did Sweden join in 2024, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
NATO
NATO membership ended a long policy of staying out of military blocs, although Swedish troops had already served under the alliance's command in Afghanistan.
William Tell was aiming at his own son, and in the legend he goes on to assassinate Albrecht Gessler, a tyrannical official of the Habsburg dukes.
Q 14Which invention, patented in 1867, earned Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel the fortune behind the Nobel Prizes?
Dynamite
Dynamite was easier and safer to handle than unstable nitroglycerin, and Nobel left the money it made him to a foundation that pays for the prizes.
Q 15What unusual shape is Switzerland's national flag, setting it apart from almost every other country's banner?
Square
Square is the shape fixed in Swiss law, although ships and boats registered in Switzerland fly a rectangular version instead.
Q 16Which super-strong, red-haired girl with a pet monkey did Swedish author Astrid Lindgren invent for a sick daughter?
Pippi Longstocking
Pippi Longstocking got her name from Lindgren's daughter Karin, who had asked for a get-well story, and the books have since been translated into dozens of languages.
Q 17Which young heroine of a Johanna Spyri novel is sent to live in the care of a grandfather in the Swiss Alps?
Heidi
Heidi is five years old when the story begins, and the novel, published in two parts, became one of the best-selling books ever written.
Q 18Which tennis player from Basel, Switzerland, won 20 major singles titles before retiring at the 2022 Laver Cup?
Roger Federer
Roger Federer worked as a ball boy at his home city's Swiss Indoors tournament in 1992 and 1993, long before becoming the first man to win 20 majors.
Q 19Which Swedish word names a set break for coffee with buns or pastries, treated in Sweden as a social institution?
Fika
Fika grew out of a coffee habit that reached Sweden in the 17th century, and the country now ranks among the world's top coffee drinkers per person.
Q 20Which dish of melted cheese and wine, eaten from a communal pot, did the Swiss Cheese Union promote in the 1930s?
Fondue
Fondue was pushed as Switzerland's national dish as a way to sell more cheese, and diners dip bread into it with long-stemmed forks.
Q 24Which organisation did Switzerland join only in 2002, despite hosting one of its major offices in Geneva?
The United Nations
The United Nations runs its Geneva office from the Palace of Nations, a complex originally built for its forerunner, the League of Nations.
Q 25What do people in Sweden traditionally raise and then circle in ring dances at Midsummer celebrations?
A maypole
A maypole is usually called a midsummer pole in Sweden, and one of the ring dances has everyone jumping like frogs.
Q 26Which giant dog breed did the hospice on an Alpine pass between Switzerland and Italy raise for rescue work?
St. Bernard
St. Bernard dogs never carried barrels of brandy, say the hospice's monks, who trace that image to an 1820 painting by Edwin Landseer.
Q 27Which food and drink giant, headquartered in the Swiss town of Vevey, owns Kit Kat, Smarties and Maggi?
Nestlé
Nestlé takes its name from Henri Nestlé, who developed a milk-based baby food in 1867 and soon began marketing it.
Q 28Which astronomer from Uppsala, Sweden, proposed a temperature scale in 1742 that put the boiling point of water at zero?
Anders Celsius
Anders Celsius marked freezing at 100, so the scale used today is his idea turned upside down and later renamed in his honour.
Q 29In which tiny state do Swiss Guards in striped Renaissance uniforms protect a ruler their corps has served since 1506?
Vatican City
Vatican City's guards must be unmarried Swiss Catholic men aged 19 to 30 who have completed basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces.
Q 30Which Swedish warship sank minutes into a maiden voyage in 1628 and was salvaged largely intact 333 years later?
Vasa
Vasa had sailed only about 1,300 metres when a wind barely stronger than a breeze tipped the unstable ship over, and millions have since visited the hull.