The result
One question, six options, no middle ground. Respondents were asked what noise level the tunnelbana should be kept at. A clear majority went straight past “quiet” and selected the option that leaves no room for interpretation.
What noise level should the tunnelbana be kept at?
- Completely silent (knäpptyst)61%
No talking, no music, no phone, no crisps. A knäpp is a small click — this is the volume at which a click would be an event.
- Whispering, but only with people you already knew before boarding18%
Striking up a conversation on the platform does not qualify. The friendship must predate the journey.
- Headphones allowed, at a volume audible to exactly one person12%
Any leakage disqualifies. Respondents were firm that tss-tss-tss counts as music being played at them.
- Normal conversation, held quietly6%
Supported mainly by respondents who had recently returned from abroad.
- Phone calls on speaker2%
We have the IP addresses and we have forwarded them to no one, because that is not how polls work, but we were asked to.
- Declined to answer1%
Answering would have required speaking. We respected this and walked away.
n = 2,412 respondents, none of whom exist. Percentages sum to 100 because we made them.
The gap is the story. Option two — whispering, but only with people you already knew before boarding — is the moderate position, and it finished 43 points behind. There is no silent majority here. There is a majority, and it would like silence.
Silence is a northern sport
Support for knäpptyst rises with latitude at a rate we would call suspicious if we had not written the numbers ourselves.
- Support for knäpptyst by city
- Malmö49%
Closest to Denmark. Make of that what you will.
- Göteborg54%
Wanted silence, but warmly.
- Stockholm61%
- Uppsala66%
- Umeå78%
- Kiruna91%
Three respondents asked whether a quieter option was available.
Except after eleven on a Friday
Time of day moves the result more than anything else we invented. The morning commute is sacred. Friday night is not.
- Support for knäpptyst by time of day
- 06:00–09:0074%
Morning commute. Non-negotiable.
- 09:00–15:0052%
Pensioners and parental leave. Standards relax.
- 15:00–18:0068%
- 18:00–23:0059%
- After 23:00 on a Friday11%
The one window in which Swedes tolerate noise, and only because they are making it.
What counts as noise
We read out a list of sounds and asked respondents to say, for each one, whether it constituted noise. They had opinions. Share who answered yes:
- A phone call on speakerNoise97%
- A video played without headphonesNoise96%
- A group of six who are enjoying themselvesNoise89%
- Headphone leakage (tss tss tss)Noise83%
- Opening a bag of crispsNoise71%
- LaughingNoise, regrettably58%
- Speaking to a stranger unpromptedNoise, and alarming54%
- A plastic bag being rearrangedNoise44%
- SneezingForgiven31%
- Asking someone to move their bag off the seatJustified noise22%
- Saying "ursäkta" to get pastNot noise. Load-bearing.9%
Note the bottom of the table. Saying ursäkta to get past someone is the only sound in Sweden with cross-party support. It is not noise. It is infrastructure.
The seat question
We also asked what the empty seat beside a passenger means. Sixty-two percent said it means the seat is free. Thirty-eight percent said it means the seat is free in principle. Both groups agreed that the correct way to resolve the ambiguity is to stand.
Four respondents reported standing for the entire length of the blue line rather than ask. Two reported doing it on a train that was otherwise empty. One described the experience as lugn och ro.
In their own words
Quotes from respondents who do not exist, lightly edited for a clarity they did not ask for:
“I do not need it silent. I just need it to be the kind of silent where I can hear the train.”
— Respondent 114, Stockholm, who selected knäpptyst
“If two people are talking I can ignore it. If one person is talking, I am in the call.”
— Respondent 702, Göteborg
“The seat next to me is not free. It is holding my jacket. My jacket has had a long day.”
— Respondent 1,188, Solna
“I have been on this line for eleven years and it has gone very well.”
— Respondent 1,904, who has not spoken to anyone on it
“Someone laughed near Gamla stan and four of us looked up at the same time. We did not discuss it.”
— Respondent 2,331
The vocabulary of a quiet carriage
This is the one honest section on the page. These words are real, they mean what we say they mean, and they will serve you well on any Swedish train.
- knäpptyst
- Dead silent. The winning option.Det var knäpptyst i vagnen. — The carriage was dead silent.
- tyst
- Quiet, silent.Kan du vara tyst? — Can you be quiet?
- tystnad
- Silence, the noun. A thing you can have, keep and enjoy.Äntligen tystnad. — Silence at last.
- lugn och ro
- Peace and quiet. Literally calm and rest.Jag vill bara ha lugn och ro. — I just want some peace and quiet.
- ursäkta
- Excuse me. The one sound everyone agrees is permitted.Ursäkta, ska du av här? — Excuse me, are you getting off here?
- Kan du sänka?
- Can you turn it down? Said rarely, and only after long deliberation.Kan du sänka lite, tack? — Could you turn it down a bit, please?
- Är det ledigt?
- Is this seat free? Technically a question, functionally a confrontation.Ursäkta, är det ledigt? — Excuse me, is this seat taken?
- hålla tyst
- To keep quiet, to say nothing.Jag höll tyst hela resan. — I kept quiet the whole journey.
Methodology
There is no methodology. This poll was never conducted. There were no respondents, no fieldwork, no sampling frame and no margin of error, because there is nothing for an error to be a margin of. The percentages were chosen because they were funny and because they add up.
Why it exists. Somebody on TikTok mentioned that Sweden had run a joke poll about how loud the subway should be, and asked whoever had the link to put it in the comments. There was no link. Now there is one. You are welcome to use it exactly that way.
What is real on this page. The Swedish words and their translations, and the fact that Swedes enjoy this joke about themselves more than anyone else does. Everything with a percent sign after it is fiction.
If you need real figures about Swedish — speakers, learners, SFI results, how much English is spoken in Sweden — we maintain Swedish Language Statistics 2026, where every number links to the body that produced it. No jokes in there. That is the point of it.
Questions people will reasonably ask
Is this poll real?
No. It is a joke. Nobody was surveyed, there is no dataset, and every percentage on this page was invented by a small Swedish software company that thought the question was funny. The Swedish words are real. The numbers are not.
Did knäpptyst really win?
It won this poll, which we wrote, which means it was always going to. Whether it would win a real one is a question we are content to leave open.
Do Swedes actually want silence on public transport?
It is a stereotype that Swedes tell about themselves more often than anyone else tells it about them. We did not measure it. We can only report that no passenger in Sweden has ever complained that a carriage was too quiet.
What does knäpptyst mean?
Dead silent, completely silent. Tyst means quiet; the knäpp- prefix intensifies it to the point of absurdity. A knäpp is a small click — knäpptyst is the volume at which a click would be the loudest thing that had happened all morning.
Can I put this link in a comment section?
Yes. That is the entire reason it exists. Somebody somewhere is asking for the Swedish subway noise poll in the comments, and now there is one.
Learn Swedish without making a sound
Swescroll is an app for iPhone and Android that locks the apps eating your time — TikTok, Instagram, whichever one brought you here — behind Swedish flashcards. Every correct card earns app time, across 8,400+ words from A1 to C2. No speaking, no video calls with a tutor, nobody to disturb. You can do it on the tunnelbana and the carriage will stay knäpptyst.
Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play
Taking this to a comment section? The link is https://swescroll.com/subway-noise-poll. Also read: 9 ways to learn Swedish fast.