Pugh Rogefeldt

The year begins with an energy crisis and petrol rationing. And there will be parental insurance so that even fathers can stay at home with their children. Cleaners around Sweden are on strike for better conditions. Worry grows for the Swedish tourists in the holiday paradise of Cyprus. That and much more in this column about the year 1974.

About Progg - progressive music in Sweden. "Everyone can play" was the slogan of the 70's music movement. But was everyone welcome to play? About capitalism, politics, equality between the sexes and hating ABBA.

A tragicomic story about rural extinction and the meeting between the local shoemaker Gustafsson and Pettersson from Stockholm.

The annual music competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio to determine the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest.

På spåret is a popular Swedish TV game show broadcast on SVT since September 5, 1987. The show, which is intended to be humorous yet educational, has remained one of the most popular TV shows in Sweden, attracting an average of 2,150,000 viewers during the 2007 season. The all-time record was set in March 1990, when 3.7 million people tuned in to see the show. This means that nearly every second Swede saw the game show. På spåret is an original format developed by Ingvar Oldsberg for SVT, and he hosted the show for many years. Author and tennis legend Björn Hellberg was promoted from contestant to permanent Oldsberg sidekick in 1995 after winning for four straight seasons. Famous gourmet, restaurant-owner, and former contestant Carl-Jan Grankvist sat in for Hellberg during the 2004 season. In 2009, after 21 years, Oldsberg left and Kristian Luuk took over as the host. Björn Hellberg too decided to leave and was replaced with Fredrik Lindström.

"Så mycket bättre" is the Swedish version of the format "Beste Zangers". This is asinging reality show where each artist attempts to do their own version of another artists well-known songs, with each person getting an episode featuring all of their songs being performed by the other musicians. The artists spend eight days together at a hotel in Gotland, where they attempt to put their own stamps on the songs.