Successful Swedes in Italy

Bridget of Sweden (Heliga Birgitta)
http://www.brigidine.org/Brigidine/preparePage.do?lang=en

Bridget was born in1303. Her father was a wealthy man, and her mother was related to the royal family in Sweden. Her mother died when Bridget was still young, so when she was 11 years old she moved to her aunt Katarina.
Ever since Bridget was a child she had been religious and she even had some visions in younger years. Bridget’s wish was to enter a convent, but when she was 13 she was married of to a man, but he was also very religious so they shared that with each other. Bridget got 8 children, but besides that she took care of young unmarried women and their children. Bridget was related to the royal family so they gave her a church in Vadstena so she could build up her own convent.
When Bridget and her man was on one of their pilgrimages he got sick and when they got home he later passed away. So when that happened Bridget wanted to build up the convent for both monks and nuns in Vadstena. To build up a convent you had to have the pope’s permission. So Bridget went to Rome in 1349. But it took until 1370 before the pope accepted her new rule, a rule that both monks and nuns could stay at the convent in Vadstena. Unfortunately Bridget died in 1373, after a pilgrimage. But the convent was built up and Bridget became a very important person for the following religious views.

Queen Christina of Sweden
Christina, also known as Kristina Wasa and Maria Christina Alexandra, was born in the year 1626 in Stockholm .She was daughter of King Gustav II Adolf and Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. She is the only female regent Sweden has had.
Christina was the only child and therefore the only heir. Because of this, her father took a great interest in her and gave her the best education, just as a boy heir would have.
When Christina was only three years old she was separated from her father, and they never saw each other again. In 1632 King Gustav II Adolf was killed in the battle of Lützen in Germany. Before he died he had given a man named Axel Oxenstierna the mission to be the regent of Sweden until Christina was of age. Axel continued as her advisor after that she had been crowned.
Already in Christina's early years she showed distaste against the Lutheran religion. At this time in Sweden you weren’t allowed to be anything than a protestant. But Queen Christina went against the law and converted to Catholicism anyway. She ruled for 10 years, between 1644 and 1654, before she abdicated. After her abdication she emigrated to Italy. She arrived in  Rome in December 1655 where the pope welcomed her.
Queen Christina died in 1689, 63 years old and she was buried in St. Peter's church. Christina is an important character and female symbol in Swedish history. No other Swedish regent has ever got so much attention abroad as Queen Christina.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Zlatan Ibrahimovic was born on 3 October 1981 in Malmö which is the third biggest city in Sweden after Stockholm and Gothenburg. His father is from Bosnia and his mother from Croatia. Zlatan grew up in Rosengård, a Malmö neighborhood known for its immigrant communities, along with his three sisters and two brothers.
He was only five years old when he got his first football shoes. He started to play football when he was seven years old. It went very well for him and he was only 13 years old when he was recruited to the major Swedish club Malmo FF where he started his career in the late 1990s. When he finished junior high school he had above average grades and got into a football school but he soon dropped out to focus entirely on his football career.
He made a name of himself when he was signed by Ajax in the Netherlands. Juventus in Italy got very interested in him some years later and paid €16 million € for him. He is a very popular and successful player so he has also played for Inter and later for Barcelona before moving back to Milan and Italy again. He made his team debut in Milan in a 2–0 loss to Cesena on 11 September, in which he missed a penalty late in the match, and scored his first goals for the club when Milan defeated Auxerre in their first Champions League match of the season on 15 September.
Ibrahimović and Kaká were the highest-paid football players in the world in February 2009, each with an annual salary of €9 million.
He also currently holds the record for the second highest transfer fee in football history, with a total of €69 million for his transfer from Inter to Barcelona.




Glenn Strömberg, former midfielder in Atalanta Calcio
Glenn is a quite famous personality in Sweden and he was a very talented boy when he was only about 14 years old. He was  born in Sweden’s second biggest city, Göteborg. In his early teenage he became a successful table tennis player. He was 14 years old when he was one of the best teenage table tennis players. But when he was more than 20 years old he changed careers and wanted to be a famous football player. Then he got a boost in his career when he started to play for IFK Göteborg. His team won many games and was one if the biggest football teams in Sweden. Glenn was a coveted man in his best days and he joined Portugal’s top team, Benfica. But after a while he felt that he didn’t get on so well with playing in that team because he couldn’t understand the language.
Not long after Glenn ended his contract with Benfica he was offered to play for Atalanta. He became a very important player in this team and everyone there knows Glenn as one of the top players in Atalanta. He was a midfielder there for 10 years and did a lot of scores in the team. After his football  career he remained in Bergamo, which now is his hometown.
Today Glenn more than 50 years old and he is still very interested in football and he works for Swedish Television (SVT) as an expert commentator. One year he was awarded the best football expert commentator in Sweden and the football fans in Sweden really liked him as such. Today he lives in Italy and he loves the culture there and the food. He has recently published an Italian food cook book and in it he shares all his greatest Italian recipes.




Here is a homepage were you can you read about Glenn's career in Italy:
http://atalanta.it/atalanta/show.do?dispatch=page&area=10storia