There is a strong culture of reaching for consensus, and to (in most cases) follow rules and recommendations, but it's nothing even close to a taboo to criticiz

There is a strong culture of reaching for consensus, and to (in most cases) follow rules and recommendations, but it's nothing even close to a taboo to criticize public figures. We generally criticize everything, and everyone, but there are very few screaming matches. What is scalding criticism in Swedish eyes might not always register as such unless you are aware of the culture. It's (probably) to some extent down to how written Swedish works in concert with our predominantly protestant culture. Swedish is reasonably good for factual discourse, and quite awesome for writing a dramatic epic with words that soar. Hitting the space in between, without sounding ridiculous, is rather hard. Most love songs and poems written in modern day Swedish are very indirect because of this, as they would risk sounding ridiculous otherwise. Life is rarely epic on the scale of the sagas. This also makes public discourse sometimes seem a bit odd, because as the last thing you want to do is to make yourself and your criticism sound inane. Scalding criticism might look more like a slight disagreement if you read it in a newspaper and considered the words at face value.