Anyway, one reason Swedish coffee culture might be something that can be noticed in NY is that we're pretty good at drinking coffee.
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coffee_con...; to get a hint about how important coffee is in Scandinavia.
Sweden is down at #6 these days, but we still clock in at roughly twice the consumption per capita compared to the US.
And the word "fika" which the first place is named for has loads of connotations, it's simply deeply entrenched here.
Going by that page perhaps I should start a dutch coffee house in NY!
I wonder if there are many Starbucks in Scandinavia? I know of only one here in the Netherlands.
Then there is also at least one in Utrecht Central, so we are down to 3 already.
Anyway, I know it was not your point.
Besides, as a Frenchman (living in the Netherlands), I'm not fond at all of Dutch coffee, but hey, it could probably work in "New Amsterdam" ;)
I overheard some people recently talking about how they sometimes take the airport express train just to have coffee at Starbucks. Which is just insane, not just because the coffee isn't particularly good (and Oslo has plenty of extremely good barista places) but because a round-trip ticket from Oslo to the airport costs $56 (€46).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Barista_Championship
So they can at least make a decent cup.
In New York, Swedish coffee (of all things) seems to be the up-and-coming thing:
http://www.fikanyc.com/about
http://www.konditorinyc.com/
No idea why. Scandinavia is exotic and hip these days, probably. Then again, a lot of new Swedish things are popping up, like Swedish pizza places (which, if you haven't had it, mostly revolves around unexpected toppings such as banana, cabbage and kebab meat).