Sweden's rise to one of the most gender equal countries in the world did not occur because women won the "battle of the sexes", but rather because their access to equal rights benefited all of society.

Trump is what we might call a “pecuniary barbarian”: a member of the financial and social elite who, in the theory of Progressive Era economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, “is of a parasitic character, and [whose] interest is to divert what substance they may to their own use, and to retain whatever is under their hand.”

While the Green Book has become something of a buzzword lately thanks to Hollywood, the “mother” of the essential guide for African Americans navigating Jim Crow America has been overlooked and all but lost to history.

What Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for the abolition movement in the United States, Fredrika Bremer’s 1856 novel Hertha did for the women’s movement in Sweden. Bremer’s boldly feminist novel graphically illustrated women’s oppression under Sweden’s antediluvian laws, and prompted a heated public debate that contributed to emerging social and legal changes for women. It also inspired an arm of the Swedish women's movement that continues to advocate for women today.

In early 1968, Sweden brought tensions with the United States to a head when it doubled down on its anti-Vietnam stance by granting asylum to four American military deserters.

When writers broadly categorize and “market” women in history using terms like rebels, bad-asses, shady ladies, rejected princesses, etc., they are – unconsciously or otherwise – perpetuating the tradition of distorting women and their role in history.

Seventy-five years ago, Sweden's questionable wartime neutrality, a Russian spy, and three "missing" Soviet bombers led to devastation in Stockholm.

Visitors fixing their gaze on the imposing towers of the medieval cathedral in Lund, Sweden may not realize it, but 12 little heads are closely watching their every move. Created to represent the future of mankind, they peer out from a split in the protective cloak of the Skyddsmantelmadonnan sculpture.

In the early 1900s, a motorcycle-riding, tobacco-smoking young woman changed Swedish journalism and introduced a powerful new female role model to Swedish literature.

Charles Lindbergh's 1933 visit to Sweden helps tell the story of how his grandfather fled the country 74 years earlier.

Six little-known women from around the world – starting with a Russian-Jewish immigrant and ending with a French former chambermaid – who contributed to first-wave feminism in the United States.

Junk history is embodied perfectly in a recent viral meme that portrays a nineteenth-century Persian princess with facial hair alongside the claim that 13 men killed themselves over their unrequited love for her. While it fails miserably at historical accuracy, the meme succeeds at demonstrating how easily viral clickbait obscures and overshadows rich and meaningful stories from the past.

A major New York City airport is named in honor of her brother, but Gemma La Guardia Gluck’s story of surviving Ravensbrück concentration camp as the political prisoner of Adolf Eichmann unjustly exists in the shadows of history.

The image of a tree in the middle of Drottningholmsvägen in 1916 tells of a world at war and a country on the verge of a major transformation.

In Stockholm's Northern Cemetery (Norra begravningsplatsen) is the large and well-maintained tomb of Count Folke Bernadotte, a member of the Swedish royal family whose role in negotiating the release and transport of some 21,000 prisoners of Nazi concentration camps to Sweden is well-documented. In the Jewish area of the cemetery not far away, lie the derelict and all-but-forgotten graves of 100 victims of the Holocaust. These were mostly very young women, who died not long after arriving i

...when looking at the columns of granite slabs listing the victims' names – grouped by the family name of the survivor or survivors who came to Sweden – along with their dates and places of birth and death, it is possible to comprehend how important a memorial like this is to the collective consciousness.

From a former slave to two Nobel laureates, a selection of women writers in modern history and their often-overlooked narratives of Christmas.

Katharine Houghton Hepburn helped American women secure the vote and reproductive freedom. Her daughter was a four-time Oscar winner. Chances are, you know about the actress, but not the activist.

History has a way of being forgotten, whether by accident or design, especially when it’s painful. Histories with straightforward and happy endings make us feel good about ourselves and more hopeful about the outcome of our own uncertain times. Those that lack resolution or defy the need for an optimistic conclusion frequently exist in varying degrees of figurative darkness – ignored, neglected, forsaken. Sometimes, the darkness is also literal – a place so tucked away from view that the eyes of the collective consciousness barely need to look away to forget.

Fika may be the most recognizable representation of Sweden's enduring love-affair with coffee and baked goods, but the lesser-known and much less-frequently practised tradition of kafferep, with origins going back to the 1700s, takes fika to a whole other level.