Svenskbygderna
Svenskbygderna | |
|---|---|
 Flag
 Coat of arms
| |
 | |
| Capital | Péturholm |
| Official languages | Swedish, English |
| Ethnic groups (2022) | 47% Swedish 24% German |
| Religion | Church of Svenskbygderna |
| Demonym(s) | Svenskbygdernian |
| Government | Unitary multi-party parliamentary republic with significant elements of direct democracy |
• Prime Minister | Sölbrun Hallsdottir |
| Legislature | Rokthing |
| Population | |
• 2020 estimate | 4,104,926 (178th) |
• Density | 2.9/km2 (7.5/sq mi) |
| GDP (PPP) | 2020 estimate |
• Total | $6.9 billion |
• Per capita | $50,000 |
| Gini (2017) | 28.95 low |
| HDI (2020) |  0.946very high |
| Currency | Luther Mynt |
| Date format | dd/mm/yy (NG) |
| Driving side | right |
| Calling code | +54 |
| ISO 3166 code | HV |
| Internet TLD | .hv |
Svenskbygderna (Swedish: Svenskbygderna) is a country in the upper midwestern region of North America. is located around 300km southeast of Iceland and 100km from Norway. The capital city is Péturholm. It is home to around 4 million people.
Svenskbygderna comes across as a typical Scandinavian-inspired state: it has liberal views towards the LGBT community, gender equality, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty. It is home to a collective bargaining culture, a strong belief in both personal and more specifically digital privacy, a high degree of public safety and a complex social insurance scheme which mixes private and public funding and provision. Svenskbygderna has reluctantly accepted the need for firearms within its uniquely-positioned society. The development of many of Svenskbygderna's significant social reforms have been instigated by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Svenskbygderna, which is the official state church of Svenskbygderna. Around 81% of citizens were members of the church in 2021.
Demographics
Hverland is one of the most racially homogenous societies in North America, with 95% of the population identifying as Northern Europeans.
Statisics Hverland is the national statistical institution established in 1905. It's primary responsibility is to collect, process and share data on the economy and society with the public.
Race
White people are the predominant race in Svenskbyderna. Asians (mostly Indians) make up around a half of a percent.
| Race | Numbers | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| White | 4,034,321 | 98.28% |
| Asian | 22,166 | 0.54% |
| Black | 12,314 | 0.30% |
| All others | 36,123 | 0.88% |
| Total | 4,104,926 | 100.0% |
Languages
Swedish and German are the mother tongues of 70.2% and 26.4% of citizens respectively. Under the Bilingual Languages Act, Swedish and German have equal status in federal courts, parliament, and in all government institutions. The public has the right, where there is sufficient demand, to receive federal government services in either Swedish or German. All online content produced by the government must be posted in both languages. Immigrants who are applying for citizenship must be able to fluently speak either Swedish or German. For most of Hverland's history, Germans-speakers were underrepresented, and Swedish-speakers were overrepresented in the ranks of the public service. However, this gap has shrunk in recent decades.
The German-speaking community is concentrated in the southwestern portion of the country. They make up majorities in the towns of Uddellefteå, Linberg, Skegård, Båtköping and Grönsås. About 9% of people living in the capital city of Pétursholm listed German as their primary language, but a total of 35% said they were fluent in both German and Swedish.
Norwegian is the mother tongue of around 3% of citzens, almost all of whom are decendents of Norwegian immigrants or are immigrants themselves.
Over 80% of citizens are fluent in English, and often acts as the auxiliary language between Swedish and German speakers. Starting in 1975, English has been taught as a required second language in all schools. While English is not an official lagnauge, most public services offer an English option.
| Language | Recognized | Number of speakers | Percent of population |
|---|---|---|---|
| English |  No
|
125,478 | 96.2% |
| Hverlandic |  ONL
|
96,261 | 73.8% |
| Swedish | ONL
|
37,304 | 28.6% |
| German | No
|
7,695 | 5.9% |
| Icelandic | RML
|
4,173 | 3.2% |
| Polish | No
|
3,913 | 3.0% |
| Ukrainian | No
|
1,565 | 1.2% |
| Yiddish | RML
|
1,304 | 1.0% |
| Norwegian | No
|
1,300 | 1.0% |
| French | No
|
1,173 | 0.9% |
| Hebrew | No
|
1,099 | 0.9% |
Religion
Religion in Svenskbygderna (2021)
For much of Svenskbyderna's history, Christianity has dominated the public and private sphere of daily life. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Svenskbyderna (commonly called the State Church) is both the established church in Svenskbyderna as well as the largest denomination of Christianity, with 9 in 10 of the population reported as members. Membership in the State Church has decreased in recent decades. There are several smaller Lutheran churches officially unaffiliated with the Church of Svenskbyderna that an additional 4% of the population affiliates with.
Lutheranism in Svenskbyderna is influenced on the Pietist movement of the early 18th century. Pietistic Lutherans emphasize following "biblical divine commands of believers to live a holy life and to strive for holy living. Frugality, humility, restraint, and sense of duty and order are common virtues of Pietistic Lutherans in Svenskbyderna. The second largest Christian denomination in Svenskbyderna is Catholicism, making up 2.2% of the population. About 1% of Svenskbydernians are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and 0.3% are Eastern Orthodox. In total, Christians make up around 98% of the population. Their distribution is spread relatively equally throughout the country, although non-Lutheran Christians are almost entirely exclusive to the capital city.
Religion continues to play a significant role in the debate over abortion and physician-assisted suicide in Svenskbyderna. The official Church of Svenskbyderna stance is, "Human life is a sacred gift from God. Elective abortion for personal or social convenience is contrary to the will and the commandments of God. Church members who submit to, perform, encourage, pay for, or arrange for such abortions may lose their membership in the Church". Parties in the Conservative Bloc (Independence Party, Farmer-Labour, Christian Democrats, and New Future) all generally oppose abortion and cite these values as one of their justifications. Among the Left Bloc, the Liberals, Green-Left, Social Democrats, and Social Liberal Party all support some form of legal abortion, although there is disagreement on gestational cutoffs and state-funding for the procedure. Alternative and the People's Party, also members of the Left Bloc, do not support legalized abortion and often vote with the Conservative Bloc on this issue. The Centre Party and National Unity do not have official policy positions on abortion.
While Lutheranism is officially the state religion, People's Law guarantees religious freedom and upholds equality, no matter one's religious affiliation. In the last census, around 1.5% of the population identified as having no religion.
Immigration
Over recent years, the immigrant population has been growing. In 2021, 8% of the population identifies as foreign-born, with the largest groups originating from Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. However, since 2018, the centre-right government has placed more stringent requirements on obtaining citizenship, including a language fluency requirement.
| Rank | Country of origin | Population | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  Hverland
|
119,008 | 91.24% |
| 2. |  Poland
|
2,791 | 2.14% |
| 3. |  Ukraine
|
1,604 | 1.23% |
| 4. |  Lithuania
|
934 | 0.71% |
| 5. |  Sweden
|
888 | 0.68% |
| 6. |  Estonia
|
723 | 0.56% |
| 7. |  United States
|
422 | 0.32% |
| 8. |  Germany
|
408 | 0.32% |
| 9. |  Iceland
|
334 | 0.31% |
| 10. |  Latvia
|
301 | 0.31% |
| 11. |  Norway
|
250 | 0.31% |
| 12. |  India
|
194 | 0.25% |
| 13. |  Canada
|
131 | 0.16% |
| 14. | All others | 2,447 | 1.9% |
Administrative districts
Hverland is composed of 21 municipalities, The main tasks of the municipalities are regional planning, education, and emergency services. In addition, the public health services are usually organized on the basis of regions. Three municipalities, known collectively known as the Grundaríslands, have a special status within Hverland and have a much higher degree of autonomy than the others, with their own collective parliament and local laws, due to its unique history and the fact that the overwhelming majority of its people are Icelandic Hverlanders who speak Icelandic. Icelandic is rarely spoken outside of the Grundaríslands and does not have official status on the mainland (although has national minority recognition). The population of the Grundaríslands was 13,772 in 2021, or 4.5% of Hverland's total population.
Economy
Economically, Hverland might typically be thought of as a socialist state: incredibly generous paternity leave, government-funded job training for the unemployed, and free healthcare. But underlying these interventionist policies is a core of liberal economics. Public spending is 23% of GDP, but this has been in decline for nearly two decades and is continuing its downward trend. In the same period, public debt has more than halved from 70% of GDP to 34% thanks to a shift in the budget from an 11% deficit to a 0.8% surplus. A lot of this has come about by allowing private companies to provide public goods by competing for contracts alongside public providers. What this sort of system amounts to is not the free market guiding the public sector, but being allowed to contribute to a well-developed welfare state. Since the initial wave of liberalisation efficiency savings haven't budged much and there is continued debate about whether private firms provide the same quality as public-run services. In essence, Hverland attempts to balance a competitive business environment with a high level of public provision of goods and services. It does not do so by sticking rigidly to the traditional free-market vs. planned economy dichotomy, but by focusing on the ends it wants to achieve (such as a higher quality of life, happiness and individual autonomy, among others) and determining which means will best accomplish them.
Hverland's political system is well suited to this economic approach. Human capital is at the centre of the government's economic agenda, and its directorial democratic institutions offer an atmosphere of trust and stability which facilitates continued safe investment. Society's egalitarian nature and easy mobility further reassures Hverlanders of the system's success and ensures their support for it. While the state does employ around 30% of the labour force, the focus of policy is on individual autonomy within an open economy rather than on state direction. This is why the private sector has been brought back into state policy after clumsy top-down planning of the mid-to-late 20th century. As one example of 'intelligent government', Hverland uses a form of 'flexicurity' that allows firms to sack employees with considerable ease, but then uses government resources and facilities to provide these unemployed citizens with generous benefits and considerable assistance in finding new work. Similarly, the government uses resources to invest in innovation within problem areas, rather than trying to solve those problems through taxes which historically proved ineffective within Hverland. Essentially, the government tends to turn political projects into business plans. In other areas, such as education, the government refuses to consider private involvement, but in these cases tends to offer a considerable degree of autonomy to the local providers rather than centrally-directing efforts.
In the 1990s, Hverland suffered a deep recession following the collapse of a telecommunications bubble The government's long-term response has been to encourage a wider range of vocational courses throughout the education system and to support graduates in creating diverse start-ups through a venture-capital fund. The fund is controlled by the Federal Technological Innovation Agency, which works alongside large businesses to provide support and advice to high-potential start-ups. This example is simply to show that innovation and entrepreneurism are strongly encouraged in the Hverlandic economic system. Its flaws are twofold: (1) many start-ups remain small in scale, or (2) they move abroad when they do begin to significantly expand. Recent government efforts to counter these problems have seen corporation tax reduced from 32% to 25%, and there is talk of further cuts.
Culture
Hverlandic culture is often seen to have arisen as a fusion of the Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic elements. While Hverlandic attitudes around most cultural issues tend to be quite liberal like the rest of Scandinavia, one area where the nation is a notable outlier relates to sexual morality – sexual relations outside marriage are controversial and promiscuity is looked down upon. Social scientists disagree on why this taboo exists.
Hverlandic music has had long folk and popular traditions. Hverlandic folk music is believed to have started with the setting of poetry and Christian and Lutheran prayers to musical backing, for group entertainment and worship, and of purely instrumental tracks played at social gatherings for entertainment, often featuring group dancing. Traditional instruments that these were played on generally consist of pipes and fiddles.
The fusion of these folk ballads and instrumental dance pieces with the work songs found by many in the cities led to popular music in the late 19th century; performers turned away from the poetic or religious lyrics of traditional folk music towards singing about every day issues many of its singers faced, such as the hardships of labour or romantic pursuits; many would start performing these songs at bars in Pétursfjord, gaining larger audiences. In the modern day, these styles of music have grown into Hverlandic styles of schlager, which in the modern day has seen many electronic influences, yet the ballads detailing people's ordinary lives still persist.
Hverlandic philosophy has developed as a particularly rich field over the years, with philosophers exploring many questions within the subject within their works. Notably, Hverlanders have done much to explore the philosophy of Lutheranism, its implications on the world, and the development of Hverlandic Lutheranism; much of this philosophy has had a great influence on the policies of Hverlandic governments in both a religious and secular form.
International
Despite the nation being known for its state of neutrality, this has been questioned in recent years, with Hverland becoming a member of NATO in 2017. Though Hverland is philosophically and constitutionally a pacifist country, it continues to maintain a minimal defense force that consists of a coast guard and national guard. Hverland is also a member of the UN, OECD, and the Nordic Council. Hverland ranks high in economic, democratic, social stability, and equality. It is consistently ranked as one of the most developed countries in the world and high on the Global Peace Index. The country runs entirely on renewable energy.