Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the head; thus crash the swede, set the swede down v., to go to sleep.

1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 254: Set The Swede Down: To have a nap.
1945		D. Bolster Roll On My Twelve 128: I’m going to turn up at that and crash the old swede.
1958		Willans & Searle Complete Molesworth (1985) 262: Bring the ruler down promptly and smartly on the victim’s swede.
1962		K. Waterhouse There is a Happy Land (1964) 90: I started pulling bits out of my hair [...] until some kids walked past and one of them said: ‘Want to get the nits out of your swede, kid’.
1977		G. Melly Rum, Bum and Concertina (1978) 15: You can crash your swedes until 0830 hours. [Ibid.] 166: Fuck a bear with birdshit all over its swede.
1978		A. Burgess 1985 (1980) 149: That’s right, Harry, keep that swede well and truly crashed.
1998		K. Sampson Awaydays 3: It’s doing everyone’s swedes in that the Scousers still see us as Wools.
2001		K. Sampson Outlaws (ms.) 68: This, in all fairness, dos my fucking swede in.

2. (also sweed) an ignorant country person; thus swedeland, the countryside; swede language/talk, rural talk [the urban conception of the countryside’s main product, foodstuff etc; thus Swedey, Metropolitan Police nickname (punning on Sweeney (Todd), the n.) for Operation Countryman, an investigation into corruption carried out by officers of rural and provincial forces].

1943		M. Harrison Reported Safe Arrival 43: Anyone not a Cockney was, in Penny’s phrase, a ‘swede-gnawing mucker,’ and to be regarded as the essence of all which was imbecilically provincial.
1956		J. Curtis Look Long Upon a Monkey 191: He was too quick for them swedes.
1958		F. Norman Bang To Rights 48: He talked like a right sweed and he also looked like a right sweed.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 274: What the other Cockneys called swede language, country talk.
1966		(con. 1954) J. McGrath Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun I iii: Stupid bloody swede. Take no notice.
1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 1184/2: swede talk. Rural talk; countryman’s talk [...] late C.19–20 [...] Swedeland. Country parts: urban derogatory: since ca. 1950.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 193: Unintelligent synonyms for hick include: booby, clown, jay, loon, lout, swede, and yokel.
1997		A. Frewin London Blues 297: It was like we were a bunch of swedes who didn’t know hay from bullshit.

3. a haircut.

1998		K. Sampson Awaydays 23: What there is of his receding hair is cropped into a vicious, spiky Bruce Foxton swede.
2001		K. Sampson Outlaws (ms.) 60: Bad tinted swede, bad tan, bad white kecks.