Assyrians in Sweden
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (100,000) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Södertälje, , Gothenburg, Örebro, Västerås, Norrköping, Linköping | |
| Languages | |
| Neo-Aramaic, Swedish, (some knowledge of Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish and Persian) | |
| Religion | |
| Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church and Syriac Catholic Church |
Assyrians/Syriacs (Swedish: Assyrier/Syrianer) in Sweden mainly came due to ethnic and religious conflicts from Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran that largely corresponds with the Assyrian homeland, including parts of what is now primarily northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, northwestern Iran, and southeastern Turkey. Also, some of the first Assyrians came from other Western Asian countries outside of the Assyrian homeland like Lebanon, Jordan, and Armenia. Those who had already lived in Sweden for a longer period were finally granted residence permit for humanitarian reasons.
The Assyrian/Syriac community in Sweden numbers an estimated 30–40,000 people (2016). An estimated 18,000 live in Södertälje, which is seen as the unofficial Assyrian/Syriac capital of Europe due to the city's high percentage of Assyrians/Syriacs.
There is an ideological division of this group in Sweden between
In order to keep alive their religious identities, they built new churches.
To account for this division, official Swedish sources refer to the group as "Assyrier/Syrianer", with a slash (similar to the US census, which opted for "Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac").
The first Assyrians/Syriacs arrived in 1967 as refugees from Lebanon (see Lebanese Civil War), numbering some 200 people.
The migration to Sweden may be broken up into a number of distinct periods: early settlement and the subsequent waves of migration sparked by the Assyrian genocide in present-day Turkey, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and, more recently, during the 2000s, an unprecedented immigration wave from Iraq and Syria reached Sweden as a result of the Iraq Wars (Gulf War in 1991, Iraq War in 2003, Iraqi Civil War in 2014–present) and the Syrian Civil War in 2011–present.
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