STOCKHOLM — Ever felt like calling up a complete stranger in Sweden?
Now is your chance.
The Swedish Tourist Association has set up a hotline that lets callers worldwide “get connected to a random Swede.”
On its website, the nonprofit group says the idea is “to spark people’s curiosity about Sweden — our culture, nature and mindset. To help us do this, we have the people of Sweden.”
It’s not completely random. The Swedes who take the calls have volunteered by downloading an app. But they are not vetted or given any instructions about what to say.
“It’s like when Swedes travel the world. You don’t know who they’re going to talk to and what they’re going to say,” said Magnus Ling, the head of the Swedish Tourist Association.
About 3,000 people had dialed the “Swedish Number” by midday Thursday, a day after it was launched, and roughly the same number of Swedes had signed up to answer calls, Ling said.
The website says the initiative honors the 250th anniversary of Sweden’s 1766 Freedom of the Press Act, believed to be the world’s first law supporting the freedom of expression.
Ling admitted there was another motive: recruiting members to the tourism association, which is funded through membership fees. Swedes who sign up to receive calls will receive an email inviting them to join the group, he said.
The calls are not monitored but they are recorded, “so that if someone says I was threatened or harassed we can go back and see who it was and even block that number,” Ling said.
The biggest number of incoming calls had come from Turkey. Ling said he didn’t know why, but thought it had to do with the initiative getting attention there both in traditional media and social media.
The hotline follows a similar initiative on Twitter by the Swedish Institute, the government’s own PR agency. Since 2011 it lets a different Swedish citizen manage its official (at)Sweden account every week.
