Apostille vs. Embassy legalisation for Sweden
An apostille is a printed certificate that a government fixes to a document to vouch for the signature and seal on it. The older alternative sends the paper on to a foreign mission for a second stamp. Sweden sits on the first path, so the FCDO slip finishes the job and no mission is involved. That is what an apostille from United Kingdom to Sweden buys you: one stage instead of two.
Sweden's Hague status and what it means
Membership of the Apostille Convention runs back to 1999 on the Swedish side and to 1965 on the British one. Two members of the same treaty accept each other's certificates without further argument, which is why the route is short. It also means the receiving clerk is judging a familiar slip rather than an unfamiliar foreign seal, and that tends to be the difference between a file that moves and one that stalls.
The Edinburgh to Sweden route step by step
The order of work rarely changes. First the document is put into a form that carries a recognised signature, which for Scottish civil records means a certified extract from Edinburgh Registration Service. Then the file travels by post to the Legalisation Office, which adds its certificate and returns it. An apostille issued in Edinburgh for use in Sweden is identical to one obtained through any other British city, because a single office serves the whole country.
Cost and timing for this route
Budget £45 for each document on the ordinary postal service, or £40 for each document if a registered business uses the next-working-day tier. The published window for the ordinary service is up to 25 working days, and the post adds to that at both ends. Nothing in the price list bends for the destination, so what you need for an apostille for Sweden costs the same as a paper bound elsewhere.
What the Swedish side will look for
A Swedish employer, registry or university is checking two separate things, and only one of them is the slip. The apostille tells them the signature is real. Whether the document itself is the correct one, recent enough for their own file, and written in a language they can read are questions their own rulebook answers. Those rules never alter the stamping route; they only decide which paper you should be stamping in the first place.