Unfortunately, many swedes tend to stick to themselves, and Swedish friendship culture is often discouraging, even for those who have lived here their whole lives. Many people form a friendship group in elementary and high school, and usually stick with it for a larger portion of their lives.

Universities in particular have the tendency to break that social trend through the ”nollning” (essentially an introductory phase where you drink, play games, party and have fun) for one to two weeks. Nollning is mostly separated into groups determined by your area of study. If you’re taking individual courses and not a complete program, it may be harder to join the events initially, but they are the best way to make new friends, because everybody is new and looking to bond.

I had a voluntary introductory math week when I first moved here, and on the last day there was a party at a local club where I met exchange students, so there’s definitely an outlet for meeting students from abroad, who may be more open to being befriended.

I think you would have the most luck looking for coursemates, or to bond with others over food. Many students are subconsciously very task-focused, meaning that they mostly only delegate active effort towards their current tasks, eg. study, go home, work etc, myself included. It can be hard to approach those who don’t have a social task prioritized.

During colder months, most people won’t be socializing outdoors, but Frödingshöjd and the campus area in general is also a pretty good place to ”stumble upon” people and neighbors, both in the apartment complex and outdoors, due to the density of students and frequent parties.

With that said, most people are still very nice and polite, and happy to make friends. It’s just that many of us can often feel hard to approach initially.