Sweden - Humpty Dumpty of World History

If you are not familiar with Swedish history, you would not expect Sweden to have much impact on worlds history. If you have seen DreamWorks animation Puss in Boots ( 2011 ), there is a scene where Hampty Dumpty reveals to Puss “You never knew it Puss, but I was always there”. These words match quite a lot to Sweden in a historical context. There are three interesting facts about Sweden without diving into much history, when Sweden was not visible, yet was there! Particularly , it is about Swedish Iron which has its story on its own, with its ups and downs. Next time you visit Paris and enjoy the Eiffel tower view, keep in mind that you see Swedish Iron. The Eiffel Tower, worth to emphasize, the one in Paris, since there are 50 Eiffel Towers all over the world, consists of 12,000 iron beams joined together with 2.5 million rivets. The rivets were made at Borgviks workshop in Sweden. The iron came from the Swedish workshop Saxå Bruk, which was also one of the suppliers of iron beams. Sweden is not known as a country with slavery history, yet during the Atlantic slave trade, the primary supplier of iron chains was nonetheless Sweden. Sweden is known for its furniture, which can be found all over the world, yet, there are also Swedish curtains – iron curtains. There is for a reason a German expression “Schwedische Gardinen,” or “Hinter schwedischen Gardinen sitzen”, which is translated as “Sitting behind the Swedish curtains,” which means to sit in jail. The high-quality Swedish steel was used in prisons to make sure that nobody escapes. Since we already mentioned German, we can also say about high-quality Swedish Iron ore, as it is called in Swedish “Järnmalm” that was the material that Wehrmacht used to produce the well-known German panzer tanks during the WW2.