I have Swedish friends, took a few years.

Almost every expat I meet has none. There is a wall there. It is unlike any other country. Sorry.

Actually, I heard that pretty much about every countries and experienced it myself (including in the US where people are supposed to be warm and welcoming) so I'm not sure Sweden is so different. Expats always have a hard time making local friends. The reason is that people have already their friends and routine, plus the language and cultural difference. Even in our own country, I think most of us don't make new friends every day (especially when getting older).

This is pretty common for all nordic countries. It's really tough getting to know people, even if you're native. I recently moved from a small town to the capitol, and struggled to meet new people.

I met a lot of people, but all of them were expats, in the same boat as me. After a few years I now have a few local Norwegian friends, but nothing like where I grew up. That said - when you get "accepted" into a group, they'll treat you really nice, and introduce you to a lot of people.

Scandinavians, and especially Norwegians are really reserved to strangers. You'll rarely be talked to in public by a stranger or something like that. It's just a cultural thing.

> I met a lot of people, but all of them were expats

I actually really like this about Copenhagen. You can meet a ton of interesting people, from all over. It's often easier to meet them than in their home countries, too, because you have this being-foreign thing in common. I've met a bunch of Spanish and German people in Copenhagen who I doubt I would've met in Spain and Germany, for example. Compared to other places where that might happen I think it's particularly ideal because there is so much use of English as a lingua-franca in public settings: many events, talks, meetups, university programs, cultural programs, etc. are in English, even when there are few to no native English speakers present, and the crowds they attract are very multicultural (lots of Danes, lots of foreigners from European countries, and a few non-European foreigners). So it's not only these little expat ghettoes like the "Italians in Germany club" that foreigners can go to. Rather, lots of public events are just routinely multinational. For example the monthly meetup of Copenhagen game developers is in English and typically has 10+ nationalities represented.

I assumed Stockholm would be similarly multicultural, but perhaps not?

I'm Swedish and I emigrated first from Sweden to France and then France to the US. I can't speak about going the other way, but having done this twice I think it takes a long time to make _real_ friends with locals almost anywhere if you are past college. Lots of interesting people are busy and have limited time.

If you're a kid or in a primarily social environment like college it's obviously a bit different. I moved both for college and my first job and made tons of friends right away, some of which I still stay in touch with.

> I'm quite tired of hearing people saying Swedish people are "cold."

For what it's worth, I think Norwegians kind of are. I say that as a shy (which can come off as cold) Norwegian. I think that our social lives can become very compartmentalized, which I guess hurts outsiders like new countrymen disproportionately.

Swedes are generally shyer to start talking to people we don't know than e.g. the Irish (or Danes). It takes longer to get friends. This is not only bad.

The Finns are, well, more Swedish than the Swedes. :-) While partying they are more open than Swedes, which makes partying a bit "too" fun, your mileage will vary.

The main problem with Stockholm is rather getting someplace to live. (Probably partly from lobbying and partly from political Moment-22 problems. The press seems to dependent on the political parties to analyze too much...)

(These are generalizations, but they are hard not to make after living in a few places and talking to a bunch of people that moved to Sweden.)