You can learn Swedish anywhere in the world, with or without help from instructors. Textbooks, CDs and videos are available from The Swedish Institute’s online store Sweden Bookshop.

To get you started, there’s a wide range of online Swedish language resources. A selection of these is listed below.

Paid distance learning courses:

Folkuniversitet – Offers several courses, from beginner to advanced (instruction by qualified teachers).

Learn Sweden – Net-based Swedish culture and language courses.

Lingua 2: Swedish – University-level course in Swedish for beginners by the Swedish Institute.

Svenskatimmen – Offers online beginner courses for English-speaking students worldwide.

Swedish Online – A five level course with sound and text files.

Swedish Made Easy – Online Swedish lessons via Skype or phone.

Free web-based courses and study aids:

Stockholm University – “Kom loss på svenska”: a beginner’s course.

Dalarna University – Internet based courses in Swedish for international students

Grammatiska Uppslag – An overview of grammar, including grammatical terminology, by the University of Gothenburg. (Temporarily offline)

Studentlitteratur – Grammar exercises with Swedish instructions.

Resurscentrum – Exercises and material.

Safir – A good interactive course.

Loecsen – Listen to the pronunciation of common Swedish phrases.

Chinastudies.eu – Introduction to Swedish written for Chinese speakers.

Swedish Flashcards – Practice with words, sentences and texts.

Language reference resources:

Språkbanken – Collection of links to dictionaries and concordances of Swedish literature, maintained by the University of Gothenburg.

LEXIN – A contextual dictionary that translates between Swedish and 18 other languages.

Folkets lexikon – The English<->Swedish “People's Dictionary” is released under a Creative Commons license and open for user contributions.

Tyda.se - A dictionary and translator between English and Swedish which also includes recorded pronunciation of the words.

Bab.la - Look up words in a dictionary, thesaurus (synonyms) or discussion forum.

GRIM – A free language-learning environment for writers of Swedish that provides grammar-checking of Swedish texts.

Interglot – A multilingual dictionary that translates between 6 languages, including Swedish, and provides verb conjugation help. 

Translation guide – Automated translator between English, Swedish and many other languages.

Lingu@net World Wide – A multilingual search engine for language learning resources - including Swedish.