[2] Viking raids occurred up and down the largely undefended east coast of England and Scotland during the eighth and ninth centuries.

Scandinavian settlements became established over the entire island of Great Britain, the most important of which was Jórvík (now York).

One of the earliest mentions of present day Sweden in old English literature comes in the form of the epic poem of Beowulf.

Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, (Swedish Viking tribe), comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel.

[5] Although most emigrants eventually left the ports for the US, some remained in Britain and started their new lives a stage early.

Former King Gustaf VI Adolf and Queen Louise made a visit to Elizabeth between 28 June to 1 July 1954.

King Carl XVI Gustaf is about 290th in line to the British throne as he is a descendant of Victoria of the United Kingdom through her third son, Prince Arthur.

King Gustaf VI Adolf continued with the British connection, by marrying the German-born Briton, Louise Mountbatten (a maternal aunt of Elizabeth II's husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh) as his second wife.

Carl XVI Gustaf's maternal grandfather, Charles Edward of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was by birth a British prince.

The Earl and Countess of Wessex has represented the British Royal Family in all the recent royal weddings the king's children of Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling, Princess Madeleine and Christopher O'Neill and Prince Carl Philip and Sofia Hellqvist.

easyJet also flies from Gatwick to Arlanda, plus seasonally to Åre Östersund for skiing and winter holidays.

Ryanair flies between London-Stansted to Stockholm-Skavsta, Stockholm-Västerås & Gothenburg, with Gothenburg-City, Malmö and Skellefteå airports in the past.

Polish airline Enter Air offers seasonal charter flights to Kiruna from eleven British airports.

[peacock prose] Cross-culturally they strongly influence each other due to being Northern European countries with a majority of people being non-practicing Protestants, with a notable immigrant population.

Major historical and contemporary British authors' literature are popular in Sweden, such as William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter, Charles Dickens, J. R. R. Tolkien & J. K. Rowling.

Due to the high literary knowledge of English language, many popular works are available and read in their original text as well as translated versions.

Around ten British authors including Rudyard Kipling, T. S. Eliot, Harold Pinter and the current winner Kazuo Ishiguro have all won the respected Nobel Prize in Literature which is awarded by the Swedish Academy.

The reason is that the UK is much more historically linked to literature in Central and Southern Europe such as France and Italy and knowledge of Swedish language is not widely known.

Due to small size of the local market and the high level of literacy of English, many British magazines in a wide range of subjects are available in Swedish newsstands like Pressbyrån.

This news-site which was started as a weekly e-mail in 2004 by two British expats Paul Rapacioli & James Savage.

The UK and Sweden have worked together in the ETSI, the EBU and the European Union in developing the standards of broadcasting, including the DAB, DVB and IPTV.

TV3's broadcasting from London is also noted, as it helped start the career of British-based Swede Ulrika Jonsson as one of her first jobs in television was a weather forecaster for the channel.

Various British TV shows are shown on Swedish public and commercial television including drama such as Downton Abbey and Happy Valley, comedy such as Keeping Up Appearances (Skenet bedrar), soap operas such as Emmerdale (Hem till gården) and documentaries such as The Blue Planet.

Conversely the British farce Dinner for One (Grevinnan och betjänten), little known in the UK, has been broadcast on SVT for over thirty years.