Can’t answer for all of Scandinavia but can answer for Sweden.
Let’s say you decide to live in one of the bigger towns but not the four biggest. Housing is cheaper but depending on where you are that can vary a lot. The other option is renting a flat or buying a flat in a housing association. The latter demands more involvement with the running of the building in some form, but could be that you’re just expected to help clean the yard once a year and turn up to some meetings. If you live in flats you normally have a communal laundry in the building. You book a laundry time and often people do a week of washing once a week. People who, mumsnet style, need to change clothes twice a day and wash them after will prob have their own machine.
It’s normal to live in a flat even with children. The communal outside areas will have a playground, maybe a barbecue area. However the smaller the town the bigger the expectation is that you will want a house especially with children, so some societal pressure. Swedes like conformity.
Outside the biggest cities it’s very uncommon to not have a car, even if public transport is quite decent. Definitely an expectation that you drive. A particular thing for Sweden is that kids from 15 can drive sort of provisionally in a vehicle that is capped from going faster than I think 30 kph. It’s deemed almost essential in v rural areas so they can get around but the law is the same everywhere. They drive around a lot at night and do meet-ups and play loud (vulgar) music. V much something for Swedes to argue about.
If you’re a couple you both work. Your children go to preschool until 6, when they start a ”preschool” class at school before starting school properly at 7. Preschool teachers are university educated. If you’re on parental leave the elder sibling can only go for maybe 15 hours/week.
Preschool is open from maybe 7-17. Esp if your middle class-ish there is pressure to not have your kids there long hours. You have a right to work a shorter week while you’re children are small. You are also allowed to stay home with them when they are sick. The state compensates you for pay loss on those days. For parents with small kids there are endless negotiations on who has to take the ”vab”. If you can afford it you try to stretch parental leave so your children start preschool as late as possible, and save days (which you can do until they are 8) so you can extend your holidays for those years. Summer vacation is ten weeks and by law AL is 25 days so you want to cover the rest. But kids go to the school wrap around care for the summer if the parents work.
When children start school the hours can be 8.15 to 13.30 (trying to remember). There is wrap around care at the school for before and after.
Both preschool and school serve hot lunches and they are really good, honestly.
I think it’s hard to make friends in Sweden, because people are quite reserved. People often know who they know, like. But if you’re from the UK you won’t be expecting to be invited home to colleagues for dinner, I think cultures are similar there. We don’t pop down the pub after work for a pint, but have invented the concept of ”after work”, AW for short, where we arrange to go out after work and hang out instead. Take advantage of this to get to know people better. If you have kids a good tip is to get them into sports the Swedish way through clubs/associations, where you as a parent have to contribute with your time and effort. It’s a good way to meet other parents and if you get involved properly that’s a lot of social life sorted. But this goes for you too, start a hobby/sport through a club and be prepared to volunteer a bit of your time.
You have to learn the language to ”get in”. Being English speaking is an advantage, it’s higher status and you’ll be the right kind of foreigner. People will be able to communicate with you in English, but you’re always on the outside without Swedish. And swedes are very judgey about how proficient foreigners are. Outside of big cities people do small talk and are very willing to chat. In big cities people are more useless 🙄
We don’t do school uniforms and dress codes, generally. Less pressure on having to look acceptable/a certain way when it comes to hair being done or makeup. We don’t really care if a preschool age child turns up in unbrushed hair now and then, for example, and kids live in leggings and t-shirts until they’re like 5.
However imo there is a low tolerance of diversity like hijab wearing. Weird think is that people stop caring once they get to know someone but they can be so nervous and standoffish until they do.
god this got super long I’ll stop now 😂