You know, maybe, just maybe, being a remote island so far away from the rest of the world it's often forgotten on world maps helps with reducing transmission vectors in pandemics.
Perhaps there were more Swedes traveling in general, but that is neither here nor there. [There were an average of 16,300 people arriving in NZ each day in early March.] NZ did in fact have plenty of overseas arrivals returning from various early hotspots (such as New York and Italy) and this is reflected in the confirmed case data showing that a whopping 39% of all of our cases were infected during their overseas travel.
Furthermore, every single significant cluster of cases was kickstarted by an index case that had recently returned from overseas.
It wasn't distance or being an island that protected NZ from experiencing an epidemic outbreak, but rather the rapid action from our government: travel restrictions, isolation/quarantine of arrivals, and strict lockdown of the entire country.
A bit over half of New Zealand's early confirmed cases were directly linked to recent overseas travel. Although the data [1] is a bit awkward to analyze, in weeks #12-14 (15 March .. 4 April) 451 cases out of the 883 total (51%) were classified as "overseas travel".
The data only includes the country of origin of the final leg of their international flight. Since there aren't any direct Europe-NZ flights, some of the cases with origins in Australia/USA/Asia could be due to passengers returning from Europe via an intermediate airport.
[1] https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...