Swedish Citizenship Ceremony

The process of applying for Swedish citizenship is quite straightforward, as long you are married or sambo/mambo/särbo/tango with a member of the Royal Family, like me or at I least I saw the queen once, which makes me quite relative to her, I hope 🙂 .

The process according to my excellence is quite straightforward, especially after experiencing the application process for the Czech, Romanian, Transylvanian, Transnistrian, Tongan, Togolese, Tunisian, Tanzanian citizenship or in any other countries or wannabe countries starting with a “T”.

In Sweden you usually apply for the citizenship after 5 years of slavery for any of the soon to be bankrupt companies or after 2 years of 50:50 way of living with a Swedish partner. I do not know what is “50:50 way of living”, I just heard on the news 😀 .

Assessment of the application from the submission date till final decision usually takes 7-9 months.
In my case it took exactly 7 months, because I was nice to Migrationsverket.

In a straight line the process looks like this:
1. You submit the application and a copy of your passport (preferably not a fake one)
2. You wait 7 months
3. After 7 months they will contact you to send the original of your passport (preferably not the fake one)
4. You will get the passport back in max. 1 week
5. In approx. 1-2 weeks you will get the official decision, which could positive, negative or a positive decision with minor corrections like changing your hair colour to blonde, starting wearing red paints, lather jackets etc.

The citizenship confirmation looks like this

After receiving the citizenship, you can easily apply for the Swedish passport, which gives you the privilege to travel to IKEA without a visa.

The entire citizenship process culminates with a massive party, which is usually organised by the district/city where you live. Since I live under the bridge just opposite Stockholm City Hall, not surprisingly I was invited to show my dancing skills at the Stockholm City Hall, where the famous Nobel banquet is also organised.

The ceremony took approx. 2 hours and the only requirement was that we had to bring our own booze, like at every typical Swedish party. Within these 2h.:
1. Stockholm mayor held a speech about Stockholm being the best place on earth, like everything in Sweden

2. Caroline af Ugglas and her large choir sang the Swedish National Anthem “Wake me up”

3. Cinnamon-buns with 2 meatballs were served to all the people higher than 1.95m
Sorry I do not have any photos with the meatballs, since I am just 1.93m and I was not qualified for them.

Swedish National Anthem for foreigners is called “Wake me up”

Swedish National Anthem for vikings is called “Du gamla, Du fria”

At the end of the ceremony an envelope will be given to everybody which contains a welcoming letter from the city mayor and few entrance tickets to different museums.
Do not try to take 2 or more envelopes 😉 , since the city authorities figured out a solution how to prevent such Eastern European behavior. They will ask you to hand over your invitation letter in exchange for an envelope. In case you are really determined to get free tickets for all your cousins, just print in colour in advance the invitation letter, however you have not heard this advice from me 😀 .

The letter from the mayor of Stockholm which literally says “Stockholm city welcomes you as a Swedish citizen”