Most people have clear ideas of things that are Swedish – Volvo, IKEA, Abba. It’s also easy, being in Sweden, to imagine that everyone knows what’s Swedish and what isn’t. But I realized that there are a few things that are very much Swedish that a lot of people (outside Sweden and Scandinavia) don’t realize. Even some really major companies.

H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) – Late last year when I was in the US, a giant new H&M store was opening in a shopping mall near where my parents live. I had to explain to virtually everyone that it’s a Swedish giant. No one I talked to seemed to have a clue. One person thought it was Dutch; another thought, improbably, Korean. But no one guessed Swedish.

Spotify – Spotify has spread all over the world to become almost like the “Google” of streaming music, i.e. synonymous with the idea of streaming music the way Google is with search. But people outside Scandinavia seem blissfully unaware of the Swedish roots of the near-ubiquitous Spotify service.

Skype – Skype revolutionized instant communications. But again, an everyday convenience and household name technology is not recognized outside northern Europe as a Swedish invention.

Tetra Pak –You probably use Tetra Pak or some facsimile of it every day without knowing it – but probably did not know that the paper-based packaging, developed in Sweden, was a revolutionary change in packaging.

Electrolux – the world’s second-largest appliance company. You know, all the white goods!

And a little older …

Celsius scale – Swede Anders Celsius invented the 100-point thermometer scale used globally.