I attended a ceremony in Gällivare, Sweden on Saturday, November 8, 2025 to be recognized for obtaining Swedish citizenship. The event was held at the city’s high school, otherwise known as “Kunskapshuset.”
I had actually obtained citizenship the year prior in 2024 but received an invitation to this event over a year later in 2025. I was interested to see how the ceremony would take place and confirmed with a city staff person that I would attend.
Although the ceremony invitation did not state this, I later learned that the ceremony was actually a part of a greater event called International Day. This would be an event spanning over many hours to showcase international food, music, children’s activities and more for the general public.
I thought it was odd that the invitation did not state the ceremony was a part of a greater event which would have allowed me to have more knowledge of what exactly I was attending and to plan accordingly. I am glad someone shared the event flier with me ahead of time which allowed me to connect the dots that the ceremony was a small part of a bigger event.
Due to a busy schedule with my small children, I opted to not attend the entire event and to just be present for the citizenship ceremony. I walked through the main entrance doors and was surprised to see the room was crowded with people. I maneuvered through the crowd with my stroller and found an empty area on the other side of the room.
A musician played music while standing on a small stage in front of the audience. I waited for the citizenship ceremony to start and hoped my children would keep enough patience to not cause a scene in the room.
Finally the music stopped and one of the city’s municipal councillors took the microphone. I did not catch everything she said, but she soon started calling names to the stage to be recognized for citizenship. She eventually called my name and I walked up on the stage and was handed a document with my name printed on it and a yellow rose. I then stood next to other people in a row who were also being recognized. Most of the names called were not present.
Once she said a final congratulations we all walked off stage as the crowd applauded.
While I took some photos with my certificate and rose afterwards, a reporter from NSD, the main local paper, came up to me and asked if she could ask me a few questions for an article she was writing about the ceremony. She asked me numerous questions and took a few photos of me. The next day I searched for the article and was surprised to see I was the featured speaker in her piece about the event. I do enjoy being in the news, most of the time.
Photo credit: Rebecka Block, NSD
