All Orthodox churches in Sweden. Religion of Sweden
While preparing this material, I looked for information about the Swedish religious situation in official sources, since my private opinion is unlikely to be completely objective. However, to my surprise, the numbers found did not become a discovery for me. I developed a fairly adequate idea of the religious life of society after six years of living in Gothenburg, the second largest city in the Kingdom of Sweden.
So, here are the real numbers: the majority (about 80%) of registered believers (or 70% of the total population) formally belong to the Church of Sweden - a Lutheran church that was separated from the state only in 2000. However, a Eurobarometer survey from 2005 shows that Sweden is the third-lowest country in the EU in terms of the number of believers (after the Czech Republic and Estonia): only 23% of Swedes believe in God, 53% believe in some kind of spirit or force of life, 23% do not believe in God or any spirit or force of life. Only 2% of the population regularly goes to church; about 1% of the population is Orthodox. A significant part of them are Serbs, Greeks, Romanians, Russians, but there are also small communities of Orthodox Finns, Estonians, and Georgians. Sweden has an impressive Muslim population.
Lutheranism (or Protestantism, as they say here) is the apotheosis of what defines Sweden and the character of the people here: moderation, restraint in everything - in feelings, expressions, design. Lutheran churches are not Catholic churches or Gothic cathedrals. There are a lot of churches in the city, some old and some not so old, but in appearance few can compare in beauty with the most ordinary church in the Russian province. Immediately after arriving here, I, who could not read Swedish, sinfully mistook churches for... crematoriums, some of them looked so “unchurched.” In the area where I live, churches are literally everywhere, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them from residential buildings.
Have I been to Lutheran churches? Yes, and I even found one where I was happy to be - this is the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Every year at the end of December, around Christmas, services are held there, and this church is perhaps the most beautiful in the city and most closely resembles an Orthodox one.
Singing Christmas carols, Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, December 2014. The girl clergy conducting the service was not included in the shot. She arrived on a bicycle, and during the service, jeans were visible from under her white cassock. How, you ask, does 80% of the population officially belong to the church? The fact is that children are baptized even by those parents who do not believe in God and are not included in that same 23% of believers. I think this is a tribute to tradition, not fashion: the Swedish church is not free, each parishioner pays more than 100 euros in contributions per year, this money is automatically deducted from the salary or benefit, for life, so few people baptize a child just like that, for the sake of the ceremony will. Perhaps those who declared their unbelief were simply embarrassed to admit it, but in fact they believe in God, which is why they baptize their children.
My refrigerator is covered with baby memorial photos, as you can see. At the christenings where I attended, a ceremony very similar to our Orthodox one was performed by pleasant elderly priests...
Well, what about that small percentage of believers who go to church regularly? In my circle there is only one such family, and they belong not to Lutherans, but to that branch of the religion that is called Christian here. These people do not drink alcohol, do not smoke, pray, their teenage daughter Yukhanna is an incredibly kind girl, this family has only heard about the problems that usually arise between parents and children in a difficult transitional age from others.
“Are you Orthodox? This is wonderful!"
“Are you Orthodox? This is wonderful!" – this is exactly the reaction that one hundred percent of my friends and colleagues had when they found out what my faith was. The conversation usually started when we accidentally saw a cross or when discussing plans for Christmas. At first I attributed such affection to ordinary politeness, was embarrassed, said “thank you” and turned the conversation to other topics, but it turned out that the Swedes really like Russian icons and priests, “a little angry, but you all Russians are also a little angry, a little smile." In general, due to the general irreligiousness of Swedish society, the idea of Orthodoxy is very superficial: some have heard about the revered St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, some have heard about Russian Christmas, which is celebrated in January, and not in December, like Catholics and Lutherans, some -he knows that in Russia there was a different calendar.
I would like to say that there was the same positive reaction to the fact that I was Russian, but I would have to lie. Unfortunately, political disagreements have taken their toll, so it’s sad to write about the attitude of Russians.
To the credit of the Swedes, they do not look for what the difference is between Orthodoxy and other branches of the same church; Orthodox means not a Muslim, not a Mormon, which means ours. When I asked them to describe in one word what the distinctive feature of the Russian Church is for them, the most common answer was “seriousness.” I must say that Lutherans are great liberals in this sense (I will not touch on the topic of same-sex marriage), here is an example from life: my friend Lisa seriously convinced the priest to change the text of the marriage vow “Do you swear to be with the servant of God... until death do you part” to “Until you feel that you are unhappy with him.” Try to imagine that you will come to an Orthodox church with such a request! Happened? I could not get. When I, a little shocked, asked Lisa why she decided to rewrite the text and how the priest reacted to it, Lisa replied: “The priest refused, I don’t understand why. He should have understood me, because he himself is married for the third time.”
Once upon a time, while living in Russia, I took my Swedish colleagues, those who asked, to church. Of course, the purpose was more of an excursion than a religious one. The churches of Moscow made an impression, but more like museums, but from existing churches I more than once took crying adult men and women who went to look at beautiful strange icons and “priests in expensive clothes” (priests during worship), and found themselves in the atmosphere of a real Church, with the smell of candles, incense, faces of saints, special light. They experienced incredible shock, some said that they had not cried for decades before, but here it seemed like nothing hurt, nothing had happened, and the tears were flowing.
It seems to me that deep down, precisely because the Russian Orthodox Church has rituals, canons and that very seriousness, Orthodoxy evokes such respect.
The main photo shows an Orthodox church in Stockholm
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Books
- The Loneliness of Alina Vorobeva, Dragan Mijailovich, The author of the novel is a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church Dragan Mijalovic was born in Belgrade in 1953. His parents separated when he was a child, and he was raised by a Russian for several years... Publisher: Aletheia,
Material from the ABC of pilgrims
Kingdom of Sweden(Swede. Konungariket Sverige), Sweden(Swede. Sverige) is a state in Northern Europe on the Scandinavian Peninsula. Form of government - Constitutional monarchy. The name of the country comes from Old Norse Svea And Ridge- “state of the Svei.” The capital is Stockholm. In terms of area (449,964 km²), Sweden ranks fifth among European countries.
Largest cities
- Stockholm
- Gothenburg
- Malmo
- Uppsala
Orthodoxy in Sweden
Orthodoxy in Sweden(Swede. Ortodoxi i Sverige) is one of the traditional Christian denominations that has spread throughout Sweden since the 17th century. Orthodoxy is practiced by about 0.6% of the country's population (~63.5 thousand people as of 2013).
Story
The first seeds of Christianity were brought to Sweden in the 9th century by its first enlightener, Bishop Ansgar. Thanks to trade ties with Veliky Novgorod, as well as dynastic marriages, Orthodoxy was well known in medieval Sweden.
In the 12th-13th centuries, Russian Orthodox merchant churches, consecrated in honor of St. Nicholas, appeared in Sigtuna and on the island of Gotland.
Since 1617, after the conclusion of the Stolbovo Peace Treaty, a merchant house church was built in Stockholm at the Russian trading court.
Since 1969, the Swedish Metropolis of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was established in Sweden, and since 1990, the British-Scandinavian Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Since the 1980s, the Greek Old Calendar Synod of Opponents opened its mission in Sweden, headed by Bishop John of Mariopol (Deurloo). The mission includes the Church of St. Constantine and Helena in Stockholm, the Assumption Church in Uppsala and the convent of St. Philothea of Athens (work is underway to build a monastery). Since 1988, the mission has published a magazine in Swedish, Orthodoxt kyrkoliv.
In 2007, the Romanian Patriarchate established the Northern European Diocese in Sweden.
Since 1962, an Orthodox magazine in Swedish, Orthodox tidning, has been published in Stockholm.
Patriarchate of Constantinople
The Patriarchate of Constantinople is represented on the territory of the country by the Swedish and Scandinavian Metropolis, headed by Metropolitan Cleopas (Strongilis) of Stockholm and Scandinavia.
In the historical part of Stockholm, the Greeks acquired the cathedral of the Catholic Apostolic Church, built in 1890, and re-consecrated in 1970 in honor of St. St. George the Victorious. On November 9, 2014, the St. Nicholas Monastery was established in the village of Rettvik.
As of 2013, the metropolis had 17.5 thousand registered members and published a monthly leaflet in Greek.
Western European Exarchate
In 1931, the Russian Transfiguration parish came under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and is currently part of the Archdiocese of Russian parishes in Western Europe.
In the 2000s, Swedish-speaking parishes became part of the parishes of the Archdiocese in Sweden: in Everkalix, Gothenburg, there is also a women's skete of the Exaltation of the Cross. The Transfiguration Parish in Stockholm publishes the theological and informational parish magazine “Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church” (“Kristi Förklarings ortodoxa kyrka”) in Russian and Swedish versions.
Finnish Orthodox parish
After World War II, about 6 thousand Orthodox Finns left Finland for Sweden and founded Finnish Orthodox communities in several cities.
To date, due to assimilation and the reduction in the number of Orthodox Finns, only one parish remains in the country - St. Nicholas in Stockholm.
The parish is under the jurisdiction of the Greek Swedish and Scandinavian Metropolis, and on December 25, 2014, Metropolitan Cleopas (Strongilis) ordained priest Nikolaos Hammarberg, who became the new rector of the Finnish St. Nicholas parish, at St. George's Cathedral in Stockholm.
Patriarchate of Antioch
The Antiochian Orthodox Church is represented in Sweden by a number of Arab Orthodox parishes that are part of the Central European Diocese, headed since 2013 by Metropolitan Ignatius (Al-Hushi). There is a Resurrection Parish in the city of Gothenburg.
Moscow Patriarchate
The Russian Orthodox Church has been officially represented in Sweden since 1617 thanks to the first Russian church in honor of the Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded at the Russian trading court under the Stolbovo Peace Treaty. Later, the church became an embassy church and was consecrated in honor of the Transfiguration of the Lord.
Russian clergy - Archpriest Arseny Sudakov and Priest Vasily Arkhangelsky carried out the first translations of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great, laying the foundation for the translation of Orthodox liturgical and doctrinal books into Swedish.
In the 1980s, the Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh arose in Stockholm, which, having entered the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1996, served as the basis of the St. Sergius parish of the Russian Orthodox Church in Stockholm. Since the late 1990s, Russian parishes have been operating in Sweden in the cities of Gothenburg, Västerås, Umeå, Uppsala and others and are united into the Swedish Deanery of the Moscow Patriarchate. Since 2004, the deanery has been headed by the Representative of the Moscow Patriarchate in Finland, Archpriest Victor Lyutik.
Serbian Patriarchate
In the 1960s, due to mass labor emigration, more than 26 thousand people from Serbia ended up in Sweden. In the 1970s, the British-Scandinavian Diocese of the Serbian Patriarchate was established in Sweden, uniting about two dozen Orthodox parishes in Sweden: in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Helsingborg, Halmstad, etc.
There is a Serbian male monastery of St. George in Olofström.
The size of the Serbian diaspora in 2014 was estimated in Sweden at ~39 thousand people (of which ~20 thousand in the Stockholm region).
Swedish deanery
In the 1980s, a Swedish deanery was established within the diocese, consisting of 4 parishes in which Swedish is the liturgical and spoken language - the parish of St. Anne of Novgorod, the parish of St. Demetrius in Kristianstad and others.
In 2001, Archimandrite Dorotheus (Forsner) founded the Swedish-speaking Holy Trinity Monastery in the town of Bredared, near the town of Borås.
Romanian Patriarchate
The parishes of the Romanian Patriarchate in Sweden are part of the Northern European Diocese and are governed by Bishop Macarius (Draga) of Scandinavia.
In Stockholm, the Romanian community founded parishes in honor of the Holy Great Martyr George the Victorious (Vanadisplan district), the Assumption of the Mother of God (Bredäng district), Holy Trinity and John the Baptist (in the Solna district). There are Romanian parishes in the cities of: Borås (in honor of the Holy Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael), Gothenburg (in honor of the Holy Spirit), Gotland (in honor of St. Nicholas), Halmstad, Helsingborg, Hillersturp, Jönköping (in honor of the Intercession Mother of God), Kristianstad (in honor of the archdeacons Stephen and Lawrence), Linkoping (in honor of St. George the Victorious), Malmö (in honor of the Holy Spirit), Örebro, Sölvesborg (in honor of the holy martyrs Athanasius, Basil), Umeå, Uppsala (in honor of the Three Saints), Västerås (in honor of St. Constantine and Helena) and Växjö (in honor of the Exaltation of the Cross).
Macedonian Orthodox Church
The Macedonian Orthodox Church is represented in the Kingdom of Sweden by several parishes belonging to the European diocese and governed by Metropolitan Pimen (Ilievsky).
In January 1973, in the city of Malmo, the Macedonians founded a parish in honor of St. Naum of Ohrid, and in 2006 the construction of a spacious church in honor of St. Naum was completed.
As of 2012, the Macedonian parish had about 4 thousand members.
The Orthodox Cathedral of St. George is one of the most visited attractions in the capital of Sweden. The temple is located in the center of Stockholm, at the address: Birger Jarlsgatan street, 92.
Orthodoxy in Sweden
Sweden is a Catholic country, but Orthodoxy occupies a special place here. The history of this religion in Sweden has deep roots. In Stockholm, back in the 18th century, Russians from Muscovy received permission to build a church. This iconic building became the first Orthodox church in Western Europe. The church was located on the territory of the town hall. Now in its place there is a city museum. In the basement of this building there is an inscription made in Russian.
Expanding contacts and influencing Orthodoxy in Sweden
The impetus for the development of contacts with Sweden was trade. In 1700–1721, Tsar Peter actively “cut” a window to Europe and especially to Sweden.
During World War II, many Orthodox Christians from Poland and the Baltic states came to Sweden, and later Greeks, Yugoslavs and Bulgarians. Already in our time, in the 1990s, a new wave of emigration took place. Since then, thousands of Orthodox Christians have lived in Sweden, and therefore there are many Orthodox churches in Sweden, and in Stockholm itself.
St. George's Orthodox Cathedral
In the St. George Church there are many icons and frescoes associated with the name of this saint. The parents of the Great Martyr George were rich people. The religious figure’s birthplace is the city of Beirut. George was a warrior. He was distinguished by courage, strength, beauty and became a close associate of Emperor Diocletian.
The emperor wanted to return paganism and persecuted Christians. George began to stand up for them and accuse the emperor of cruelty. Then Diocletian persecuted George himself. He was imprisoned and severely tortured. He endured suffering courageously. By order of Emperor George, he was executed. The people gave the great martyr the name “Victorious” for his spiritual victory over the enemies of Christianity. The relics of the saint are kept in Palestine, in the city of Lida.
In many icons, George sits on a white horse and slays a snake. This icon is an image of the legend about a snake that killed girls and boys. When the serpent wanted to kill the ruler's daughter, a young man appeared on a white horse, saved the girl and killed the enemy. It was St. George the Victorious.
Symbol of courage
In Stockholm, residents consider George the patron saint of the city. A monument was erected to him, which is a sculptural group - George on a horse kills a dragon. The rescued princess knelt nearby. The original in 1489 was made of expensive wood and gilded. This is the oldest wooden sculpture in Europe. It is kept in the Church of St. Nicholas.
In 1912, a bronze statue, a complete copy of the wooden one, was erected in the city center. It is installed on the Town Hall. The monument has a hidden meaning - St. George is perceived as a symbol of the courage of the Swedes, the dragon - enemy malice, the princess is Sweden in need of protection.
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