As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered an alpha world city by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) study group. The city is also the cultural capital of the Netherlands.hips sailed from Amsterdam to the Baltic Sea, North America, and Africa, as well as present-day Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Brazil, forming the basis of a worldwide trading network. Amsterdam's merchants had the largest share in both the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company.
1 Sweden is the 3rd largest EU country in land area, after France and Spain. 2  Sweden is one of the homelands of the Germanic ethnicity and culture. 3  The Goths, the Suevirs and the Norses (Vikings) all trace their origin back to Sweden (as well as Norway and Denmark for the latter).
History of Sweden. During the 11th and 12th centuries, Sweden gradually became a unified Christian kingdom that later included what is today Finland. During the early Middle Ages, the Swedish state also expanded to control Norrland and Finland. Modern Sweden started out of the Kalmar Union formed in 1397 and by the unification of the country by King Gustav Vasa in the 16th century. Vasa fought for an independent Sweden and broke with the papacy, establishing the Lutheran Church in Sweden. In the 17th century Swede