You’ve had the Belgian’s, the Scots, Welsh and Swiss — now its time to find out more about those lovers of relaxed liberal attitudes and furniture with funny names… the Swedes.

The Swedes

1. In 2008 a Swedish university received $590,000 in research funds to measure the greenhouse gases when cows released their own bodily gases!

About 20 cows participated in the project run in Uppsala, about 40 miles north of Stockholm. The project leader Jan Bertilsson said the cow’s methane gas expulsions were measured depending on the type of food they ate by a collar device around their necks.

A criminal gang which hid dwarves or midgets inside bags was blamed for a spate of robberies on buses in Sweden last year4BR

2. The Swedish language is similar to the English alphabet as, but we three more letters: å, ä and ö.

3. In June 2007, a Swedish heavy metal fan Roger Tullgren was awarded state disability benefit due to his addition to heavy metal music.

The 42 year old Tullgren, who sported long hair, tattoos and heavy metal jewellery, had attended nearly 300 concerts during the past year and had claimed he had been addicted to the music for 10 years – something confirmed by three psychologists.

As a result, his employer had to allow Tullgren to have heavy metal music playing at his place of employment as a dishwasher.

4. In Sweden IKEA is seen as a cheap furniture store, not a trendy ‘lifestyle’ store and are only open until 8pm on Bank Holidays.

5. All employers (as of 2004) are required to provide free massages to employees.

6. Taxes in Sweden amount to between 50% and 70% of your income. (Gordon Brown may like to take note!)

7. St. Lucia is a nationally celebrated saint, despite the fact that she gained sainthood by plucking out her own eyes to avoid being seduced by a man. Little children dress up as her every winter – although they don’t blind themselves in doing so!

8. Swedish Inventions include: The perfected the design of the zipper (Gideon Sundbäck); The marine propeller (John Ericsson); The refrigerator (Carl Munters and Baltzar von Platen); The computer mouse (Håkan Lans) and the heart pacemaker (Rune Elmqvist).

9. Carl Von Linne, known as Linnaeus, was a Swedish botanist and naturalist who lived in the sixteenth century. He introduced the scientific method of naming flora and fauna.

10. A criminal gang which hid dwarves or midgets inside bags was blamed for a spate of robberies on buses in Sweden last year.

Police worked on the theory that the gang of thieves used the pint-sized miscreants hidden in baggage on buses to emerge during the journey to steal other passenger’s valuables from bags in the luggage racks and boot.

Police were said to have ‘quizzed’ 'people of limited stature' with criminal records, although the authorities were not certain if the tiny scoundrels behind the micro-heists were also children, or midgets.