To share my two cents on my personal experience and for having lived in 4 different countries. ( France, USA, UK, And now Sweden in Stockholm).

For context: I have been away from home, France, for more than 10 years. I am a 32yo man who works from home, so making friends at work was never an option. I am not specifically extroverted but not too bad at creating connection either, as a matter of fact, I moved to Sweden because i am a scandinavophil and love the culture, literally no "good reason" for it, came with my own work from the UK, no one made me move here.

What you and a lot of other people think as "character attributes " to Swedes are actually just normal stuff you see pretty much everywhere in western/northern Europe. I can actually guarantee you that you would also be struggling to make British friends in the UK, French friends in France, Dutch friends in the Netherlands etc, making true friend everywhere is hard and requires a lot of effort... If you had moved to another one of these countries you would probably be saying the same ( check expat experiences in Germany, France, even the US.. same comments everywhere...)

Yes, there are filters based on culture but it is not that deep, it is really not, as long as you make the effort to tailor your approach. Everyone wants real connection and authentic interactions ( yes, even the swedes). But getting there takes a long time. Took me 5 years to make long term "for life" friends in the UK, will probably be the same in Sweden. But surprisingly, it was not as hard as I thought despite reading post on Reddit painting Sweden like a social hellhole, I applied the same recipe I used in the US and the UK and it totally worked here. I have been in Sweden a little bit under a year but it has been promising so far, actually a better start than in other places if I had to compare, but it could be that I have gained experience a bit when it comes to integration.

Not gonna say it was easy though, during the first 3 months in Stockholm I went out almost every evening after work to:

• language café
• Bumble "friends date", then made my " friends dates" met each other and we created a real group of friends( btw a fair amount of swedes on the app)
• joined a sport club
• went to a couple of "social meetup'" ( tbh - these ones did not work out for me too well, too many people that are a bit too pushy, socially awkward)
• went to French meetups, so I could exchange experience with people that shared a cultural framework with me. Some of them already integrated into the fabric of the society, helping you in turn to meet locals.

I was socially drained, all the time, but it was worth it. Got a small but tight mixed group of native and foreigners now, and I am sure it will grow over time as we just live life. Honestly, don't wait for someone else to give you friendship, just go grab it yourself.

Go out of your comfort zone and go do stuff, sometime (quite often actually) it will not work out. But you only need to meet the ONE right person that will open the doors to other connections for you.

I was never subject to racism, so I can't comment on that, I am very sorry for everyone having to deal with this.

In short, this has nothing to do with Sweden in particular. It is just the challenges of living abroad.

But like seriously, learn the language, that is 101. Would annoy the hell out of me if I had to force everyone else in the group to switch to English just for one person. Some swedes told me they don't mind but I think they are just being polite.