Mandaeans in Sweden
is home to one of the largest communities of the Mandaean ethnoreligious group, numbering around 8,000 people. By comparison, there are now only about 3,000 Mandaeans in Iraq, the homeland of the Mandaean people. Several thousand of Swedish Mandaeans were granted asylum status as refugees from persecution in Iraq and Syria.
The first Mandaeans came to Sweden in the 1970s, including the al-Khafaji family who owned a goldsmiths business on Kungsgatan in Stockholm. The first Mandaean religious worship took place in 1997 when a tarmida from the Netherlands was visiting. Following the Iraq War there was an influx of refugees, and as of 2017 there were a total of eight tarmidas living in Sweden under the leadership of Salwan Alkhamas, who holds the position of genzibra. The first Mandaean place of worship, or mandi, was consecrated in Sandviken in 2003. Most Mandaeans in Sweden live in Scania in the south of the country, and in the Stockholm region, with a growing population of about 1,500 people in Södertälje.
