Swedes

A commemoration of the transfiguration of Jesus will be held at a special service at 7 p.m. Sunday at Christ Church (Old Swedes), 740 River Rd., Swedesburg. Three churches will participate in the service: Christ Church, First Baptist Church, and Upper Merion Baptist Church. The service will combine elements of the Episcopal and Baptist traditions. SERVICES AND PROGRAMS A program on Taize prayer will be held from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday and March 6, April 3, May 1, and June 5 at the Franciscan Spiritual Center, 609 S. Convent Rd., Aston.

One day after Sweden's hockey coach, Bengt-Ake Gustafsson, created an international stir at the Winter Games by talking about tanking yesterday's game against Slovakia to avoid meeting Canada in the quarterfinals, the Swedes lost, 3-0. When the medal round begins today, Sweden will face underdog Switzerland, which is what Gustafsson said was the more desirable matchup. The International Ice Hockey Federation said it was monitoring the situation, but said it had no protocol to act unless it felt the game was compromised.

This hasn't been a great Olympics for the Swedes. Their top-seeded hockey team fell flat yesterday in a 3-1 loss to Czechoslovakia in the quarterfinals, and medal hopes in skiing and speedskating have gone unfulfilled. Reaction back in Sweden has been less than forgiving. On Sunday, the tabloid Expressen, with a circulation of about 600,000, held almost all the Olympic copy filed by its reporters. Instead, it ran a headline across two pages stating that this was the space where the paper had intended to tell its readers about the Swedish success in the Olympics.

ENGLAND FINALLY got a result against Sweden it can live with. No, not a win - that has been too much to ask for. A 2-2 tie yesterday in Cologne, however, was enough for the English to win Group B at the World Cup. Sweden's Henrik Larsson tied it off a throw-in, getting the slightest touch to deflect the ball into the net in the 90th minute. Eng-land hasn't beaten the Swedes since way back in 1968 - 7 years before David Beckham was born - a streak of frustration that is now at 12 games.

At night, 6-year-old Frederik Warnsberg wets the bed. In the morning, he cries to his parents, and pleads to stay home from school. When he gets home at day's end, he is exhausted. His father, Ulrik Warnsberg, blames the government. This, he says, is what happens when you start slashing the welfare state. The budget at Frederik's public child-care center has been cut, teachers have been laid off, and more children are being herded into fewer classes. When Frederik was 3, he shared a room with seven children, taught by three adults.

After an intense search for unidentified submarines in Swedish waters, the military conceded yesterday that two of the eight intrusions it had reported during the last two weeks might have been rocks rather than foreign subs. "We've had divers down and evaluated all the evidence in the eight different incidents and in two of them we think cliffs caused the scare," said H.G. Wessberg, spokesman for Sweden's defense staff. "But in the six other cases we've had recently we've been down there with divers too and have indications of foreign intrusion.

As John LeClair and Joel Otto leaned against a metal fence in the Big Hat arena, the one that quarantines reporters from athletes, members of the Swedish team marched past. "Some big boys there," LeClair said to Otto, glancing at the players in blue uniforms with three gold crowns emblazoned upon them. "Some pretty talented ones, too. " Just how talented, the United States will find out tomorrow when the two teams meet in the opening game of this Olympic hockey tournament's final round.

It was that nightmarish week after Swedish leader Olof Palme was killed, a week when Swedes were still trying to understand the birth of political violence in their land, still wondering about a cause, a motive. Magr Bukouac was coming home from work. A native of Yugoslavia, she has lived in the same apartment house for 16 of the 20 years she has been in Sweden, without anyone ever making her feel unwelcome. But one night that week, someone did. On the entrance to the building someone tacked a boldly lettered poster with the initials BSS, which stands for Bevara Sverige Svenskt - Keep Sweden Swedish - the motto of an extreme right-wing group that favors drastic curbs in Sweden's liberal immigration policy.

In the murky, muggy sunshine, 20 children stood in the parking lot at the Cherry Hill racquet club, clutching impossibly large tennis rackets. "All right, let's go," barked David Bandelin. "Backwards!" He was dressed like the children - wearing a baseball cap, white shorts and tube socks. But he was the only adult on hand, and he was in control. Off they went, around the lot, running backwards with their rackets that seemed to be bigger than them. They were supposed to be learning agility, but it seemed as if they were more interested in conserving energy in the heat.

There was no trash-talking or finger-pointing between Sami Kapanen and Kim Johnsson as they passed each other in the hallway yesterday at the Flyers' practice facility. It was too soon for any of that. Besides, that's not the way for Scandinavians, known for their quiet reserve. But if Sweden and Finland win their semifinals today at the Olympics and are matched in Sunday's gold-medal game, either Kapanen, a Finn, or Johnsson, a Swede, is going to have bragging rights. "It's kind of a bittersweet rivalry," said Kapanen, the feisty little winger who declined to play for Team Finland so he could rehabilitate his surgically repaired shoulder.

  RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. - Sweden's Karin Sjodin shot a steady 4-under 68 through heavy wind while chasing down top-ranked Yani Tseng on Saturday, pulling even at 9 under heading into the final round of the Kraft Nabisco Championship. The dominant Tseng proved she's not unbeatable, showing visible frustration while posting a 71 as inconsistent as the wind that buffeted Mission Hills throughout her round. While Tseng is a five-time major champion, the long-hitting Sjodin has never won in seven seasons on the LPGA Tour.

FRANKFURT, Germany - Meticulous planning and execution are everything in Japanese soccer. So when the team falls behind, there is a system to rely on, a belief there is still a way to win. Japan is in its first Women's World Cup final, and its quick passing could pose a challenge for the favored United States on Sunday. Coach Norio Sasaki has been planning for this moment since the 2008 Olympics. "In Beijing, we finished fourth and, at the time, it was our intention," Sasaki said.

VANCOUVER - Peter Forsberg glided down the right side, anticipating the pass. He wasn't charging like his former locomotive self, but he was in the right place at the right time, just to the right of the goal, his team leading by one late in the game, poised to put the game away. The pass came. It hit Forsberg's stick. He could not control it. It bounced away, harmlessly. After two Olympic preliminary games, the Swedish legend is proving what he's been telling everyone since he left the NHL in 2007: He isn't anywhere near the player who carried the Colorado Avalanche for nearly a decade.

A lack of rain was partly to blame when the Grand-Am Rolex Series made a gritty, grimy debut at Thunderbolt Raceway last year, with dust clouds enveloping the track every time a car veered off course. New Jersey Motorsports Park officials figured they had the dirt problem licked, thanks to upgrades on and around the road course, specifically the thick green grass that now surrounds the 14-turn, 2 1/4-mile track's paved racing surface. New challenges cropped up yesterday, though, when persistent rain put much of the facility under water for the Verizon Wireless 250. Endurance racers are accustomed to dealing with problems, and the two biggest concerns during the 2-hour, 45-minute marathon were traction and visibility.

Ingemar Johansson, 76, the Swede who stunned the boxing world by knocking out American Floyd Patterson to win the world heavyweight title in 1959, died Friday at a nursing home in Kungsbacka on the Swedish west coast, his daughter Maria Gregner said yesterday. Johansson was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and dementia more than 10 years ago when he lived in Stockholm. Known as "Ingo" to Swedes, Johansson knocked out Patterson in the third round at New York's Yankee Stadium on June 26, 1959, to win the heavyweight title.

Of course, the marjoram-scented pea soup may not precisely replicate the steaming bowls that are still fixtures at eateries all across Stockholm on any given Thursday night. Here at South Philadelphia's stately American Swedish Historical Museum, the peas are yellow and split. In Sweden, they tend to be whole. And the ham speaks, well, with a different accent. But on Saturday morning, the Men's Pea Soup Committee will cook up 16 gallons of what is considered an extremely passable rendition, stirring devotedly away in the museum's basement kitchen in the sprawl of FDR Park.

If you visit the memorial to the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, you'll step past a giant anchor raised from the sunken battleship. It stands taller than two men and weighs more than an elephant, strong and steadfast even in loss - and it was cast in the city of Chester. If you own a vintage 1950s Ford, there's a chance it was built in Chester, at a sprawling assembly plant that once employed a young salesman by the name of Lee Iacocca. If you listen to the sermons of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or the rock-and-roll of Bill Haley, you can hear echoes of Chester.

The Easter traditions of the Swedish may very well fool you into thinking it's October. People believed that witches, whom they called "Easter hags," practiced black magic during Easter Week. On Maundy Thursday, a day observing the feast of the Last Supper, Swedish children dress as witches to go door to door seeking candy from their neighbors much like Halloween. Instead of a flowering pastel bonnet, children wear a paskris, a headdress made of twigs and feathers to welcome spring.

Farewell, Foppa. Flyers center Peter Forsberg was traded to the Nashville Predators last night for highly regarded defensive prospect Ryan Parent, right winger Scottie Upshall, and first- and third-round picks in the 2007 draft. Forsberg, 33, met earlier in the day at the Wachovia Center with club chairman Ed Snider. At 5 p.m., Forsberg said he felt his fate would be determined before Sunday. "I'm sure it will all be settled by the weekend," he said. "I don't know if it's a deadline, but everyone wants it settled as soon as we can. " Two hours later, one of the NHL's most gifted setup men, and perhaps the most exciting, agile center to wear a Flyers sweater, was sent to the Predators.

The United States made seven consecutive birdies to end the front nine, vaulting up the leader board at the World Cup. Wales finished its day with five straight, and Scotland strung together four in a row to put itself in contention. But they're all still looking up at Sweden and Argentina entering today's final round. Sweden (63) rallied to finish 16 under par and with a 1-shot lead over Argentina (67), with Scotland (65) another shot back on the Sandy Lane course in St. James, Barbados.