Dödligt virus från Kina orsakar panik (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19)

Every summer for the past 13 years, fans of Nordic culture have gathered on the Norway side of the border with Sweden for the outdoor festival Allsang pa Grensen, which translates roughly to, “Singsong Along the Border.”

But this summer, there will not be any Swedish singers in the live broadcast event, nor will there be any Swedish fans in the audience, singing and clapping along. This year, Swedes are forbidden to enter Norway.

And Norway isn’t the only Scandinavian neighbor barring Swedes from visiting this summer. Denmark and Finland have also closed their borders to Swedes, fearing that they would bring new coronavirus infections with them.

While those countries went into strict lockdowns this spring, Sweden famously refused, and now has suffered roughly twice as many infections and five times as many deaths as the other three nations combined, according to figures compiled by The New York Times.
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Mr. Tegnell also said that infections in Sweden “had peaked,” and were now falling, a trend reflected in The Times’s figures.

Experts in the other Scandinavian countries say the higher immunity levels have not been proven through rigorous testing, and that such talk misses a major point.

“When you see 5,000 deaths in Sweden and 230 in Norway, it is quite incredible,” said Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway and the former director of the World Health Organization, during a digital lecture at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in May. “It will take a lot to even out this difference a year or two into the future.”
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While the emergency laws and “strong travel advice” have upset many Swedes, nothing has been more painful than the behavior of their neighbors, said Ann Linde, Sweden’s foreign minister.

“It is sad and frustrating that regions on the borders were so easy to close,” said Ms. Linde. She pointed to southern Sweden, where coronavirus infections were much lower than in bordering Denmark. Nevertheless, she said, “suddenly there were border guards” on the bridge connecting the two countries.

“That will take time to heal, it was too harsh,” she added. “It is very difficult to understand. There were far more deaths in Copenhagen.”

The travel restrictions imposed by their immediate neighbors, Denmark, Finland and Norway, have exposed resentments and differences that usually are obscured by a Scandinavian sense of mutual identity and niceness.
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But then came the pandemic. The issue of Sweden’s pariah status was hotly debated recently on a popular Scandinavian radio program, “A Norwegian, a Swede and a Dane,” which broadcasts weekly in all three countries.

“We can’t visit Norway. We can’t go to Denmark,” said Asa Linderborg, a journalist with a leading Swedish paper, Aftonbladet, adding that even Finland had barred Swedes.

“We are supposed to sit here in our corner of shame, and the worst part is that you’re savoring it,” she said, referring to Sweden’s neighbors. “All Norwegians, all Danes and all Finns are loving that the Swedes aren’t welcome anywhere. I long for you, yet you don’t long for me.”