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The 80-90 % of population of the Scandinavian countries & the Netherlands know English as their second language. So don't worry, everything will be just ok.

My tip: don't learn Swedish. There is no reason for it, except if you plan to live here for a very long time. Most of my colleges don't know swedish, and they find no reason to learn it either. In fact, on most occasions, people will treat you BETTER if you speak english to them. Swedes have a huge respect for people with good english – much more than for people who talk swedish with an accent.

It's only 9 million people speaking it. Too small to be worth the effort ;)

I have been to Sweden many times. The only people I encountered who didn't know any English were 60+.

You'll get by in Sweden using English just fine. Learning Swedish will help, but you will likely find yourself conversing in English most of the time, as they will likely speak English better than you can speak Swedish.

I'm not saying you shouldn't learn any Swedish though. The more Swedish you learn, the better, but you will get by fine with just English.

I live in Sweden and everyone I know speaks English. I read somewhere that about 87% of the Swedish population speaks fluent English. Even my ten year old cousin has a basic understanding of English and can speak it to a certain degree.

My cousin actually corrected my English pronouciation the other day. I was talking about the ice cream Ben and Jerry using the Swedish pronunciation of Jerry, "Yerry", since we don't have the j-sound in Swedish, and he corrected me and said it was pronounced "Jerry". So there shouldn't be any problems for you :)

Most Swedes, especially in sciences, speak excellent English.

You should give learning Swedish a try, however. I recommend a book / cd combo called Beginner's Swedish, by my friend and colleague Scott Mellor.

Knowing a bit of the language will put you in good terms with the other people you work with and live with.

There are 2 good distance ed courses on my database:

http://carla.umn.edu/lctl/db (look up Swedish and 'distance'

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In general, Swedes are fluent in English. You might find old people, or people with little or no education who are not fluent, but even they would probably be able to communicate in English.

I am certain that you will find Swedes whom speak English in your field of endeavor. Contact some, a few or several, ahead of time. I think you will be delightfully surprised.