A Flatpack History of Sweden Podcast / Kingdom

9th December: Historically, according to folklore and tradition, today is the day you should have a taste of your home brewed Christmas beer to check that it’s coming along nicely for Christmas. Cheers!

Chris read a cool article about the Battle of Grunwald of 1410 in Medieval World magazine!

Fun to revisit such a pivotal battle that, whilst not involving Swedes, shaped the geopolitical landscape around the Baltic Sea for decades to follow.
We covered it in our first Tangent Time episode too!

You're absolutely right 😊
Or, if the ruler is aiming really high, they do all three 😂

Of course we can't count... They're celebrating 625 years!

8th December: Podcast favourite Queen Margareta gave Vadstena their town privileges today, in the year 1400. Happy 825 years, Vadstena!

We're back with ranking rulers on Kingdom! King Birger comes to throne on the back of a lot drama in recent decades and it will only continue in Birger's reign, as we see a famous event worthy of Shakespeare or Game of Thrones. But what else will happen and will Birger receive the top prize?

7th December: In 1813 Swedish and Danish forces clashed in the Battle of Bornhöft, part of the War of the Sixth Coalition (which in turn was part of the Napoleonic Wars). This was the last time the old Nordic enemies fought each other on the battlefield, or seas.

December 6th: More TV for the people! #OTD yesterday in 1969, Sweden got a second TV channel, imaginably just called TV2. The first television channel had started over 10 years earlier in 1956 and didn't have the most imaginative logo either!

We were also a bit keen and celebrated a day early 😱 It is actually today!

Ah cool! Got all the info you need for future episodes! 😀

5th December: Today we say Grattis på självständighetsdagen / Onnellista itsenäisyyspäivää to our friends and Nordic neighbours on the other side of the Baltic Sea, as Finland celebrates their independence day!

4th December: The Battle of Lund, the bloodiest battle in Nordic history, fought between Swedish and Danish forces on the plains outside Lund in Skåne, took place today in 1676. It was part of the War of Skåne, fought mainly in the province between Sweden and Denmark-Norway.

3rd December: We mention the town of Uppsala, famously a seat of both university and church power in Sweden, quite often on the podcasts. Today, in 1890, their local newspaper, Upsala Nya Tidning, was first published. Although 135 years later it’s maybe not so “new” (ny) anymore.

2nd December: Today in 1766 the Freedom of the Press Act (Tryckfrihetsförordningen) was introduced. It is often considered the first act of its kind in the world, constitutionally protecting the freedom of press and information.

Follow our page this December for a new Swedish history fact each day!

Traditionally they were made out of paper and the idea was that there was a pretty picture behind each “door”. Our one is having Swedish history facts!

Follow our page this December for a new Swedish history fact each day!

1st December: Christmas calendars are called Julkalender (a literal translation of the same word) or Adventskalender (advent calendars) in Swedish. Originally a German tradition, they became popular in Sweden in the early 1900s.

Tomorrow is the 1st of December and we thought this year we would do a special Flatpack/Kingdom Christmas Calendar! 🎄🤶

So starting tomorrow, we will publish a Swedish history fact for each day of December, all the way up until the start of 2026. Hope you enjoy!

Along with the final part of our Birger Jarl trilogy, we've also released a brief update on the Flatpack feed, about our upcoming appearance at Intelligent Speech in February!

Go to intelligentspeechonline.com and use the code SWEDEN to get 10% off your ticket. We're looking forward to it!

Tomorrow will be the last release of the Birger Jarl episodes on the Kingdom feed.

Hope you have enjoyed the life story of this great man and the conclusion!

Attention listeners who use Spotify! 🟢

We have now updated our Kingdom feed so you can vote on each episode to say if you believe the ruler should receive the Three Crowns or not! 👑👑👑

We're excited to see if you agree with us or not...

Attention listeners who use Spotify! 🟢

We have now updated our Kingdom feed so you can vote on each episode to say if you believe the ruler should receive the Three Crowns or not! 👑👑👑

We're excited to see if you agree with us or not...

Chris is back in Colombia and we're back recording for our future Kingdom episodes 🎙

Sneak peak, we're recording well in advance for some episodes due out in January and February! 🫢

Today we've released part two of our three episodes looking into statesman and general puppet master Birger Jarl!

We have some family trees on our website too, for episodes 37-41, which we created for our Flatpack series!

aflatpackhistoryofsweden.com/about-the-po...

Tomorrow we release part two of our three part mini-biography on Birger Jarl on the Kingdom feed!

We have a whole bunch of family trees on our website that hopefully make it a bit easier to understand this man's life. Here's a preview and a link.

aflatpackhistoryofsweden.com/about-the-po...

November is the month of Birger Jarl! It started yesterday with part one of a three-part biography we're releasing on the Kingdom feed.

The next two Sundays will see us complete the story and learn more about the man who later received a golden tomb outside Stockholm City Hall!

We're Chris and Åsa, hosts of A Flatpack History of Sweden and Kingdom: Swedish Rulers!

We go chronologically through Swedish history and also rate and judge all the rulers of Sweden in our two podcasts.

You can find all you need to know on our website!

www.aflatpackhistoryofsweden.com

And here's the statue of Birger Jarl we start the episode standing beside!

He looks a bit like a moody Batman in the light here though...

Sometimes the most important person in the kingdom isn't the monarch, but the one doing the actual ruling.

That was definitely the case with Birger Jarl, so we're looking into his life in a three part series for Kingdom, republished from Flatpack! But no, he won't be getting a ranking at the end 😉

Och kul att Chris var där i Gamla Stan i går!

Chris has been running some errands in the old town of Stockholm, Gamla Stan.

It's easy to imagine people 500 years ago in the time of Gustav Vasa doing the same, as they got on with their lives. The errands might have also included executing people back then, but close enough!