Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tacitus described the Swedes, listing them as Suiones in his Germania of 98 AD, as a powerful tribe distinguished not merely for their arms and men but for their powerful fleets, with ships that had a prow at both ends. This is the earliest written record of the Swedish people.
The name svensk derives from the svear, the people who inhabited Svealand in eastern central Sweden. Scholars trace the root to the Proto-Indo-European reflexive pronominal root s(w)e, with a likely original meaning of "one's own tribesmen." The same root appears in the Germanic tribal name Suebi, preserved today in the German region Swabia.
Swedish Vikings, known as the Rus, are widely considered among the founding fathers of Kievan Rus. They travelled east and south through Finland, the Baltic countries, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, with their routes passing down the Dnieper to Constantinople. The Arabic traveller Ibn Fadlan documented them on the Volga, describing them as tall, blond, and ruddy, each carrying an axe, a sword, and a knife at all times.
Both slavery and serfdom were abolished in Sweden by a decree of King Magnus IV Eriksson in 1335. Feudalism had largely not taken root in Sweden to begin with, and Swedish peasants remained a class of free farmers throughout most of Swedish history.
More than one million Swedes moved to the United States between 1850 and 1910. Most settled in the Midwestern United States, particularly Minnesota, and in the early 20th century more Swedes lived in Chicago than in Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city.
Sweden joined NATO on the 7th of March 2024, ending more than 200 years of official neutrality. The decision came in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.