Yeah my friend said something the same, some of their firearms laws are pretty restrictive.
The point is though, these rifles are selling for a song over there.
8mms are selling for a song here as well - unless it has some sort of collector appeal as an unbubba'd Mauser milsurp or some name cachet like "Husqvarna" or "Schultz & Larson", etc.
I haven't looked, but what does an 8mm milsurp sportorized by the local gunsmith back in the 50's, 60's, early '70s go for in the EE with the wood and barrel chopped and drilled and tapped for scope mounts? There's lots of them out there, my neighbor growing up and his two sons all hunted with 8mms that got that treatment by the local gunsmith. And they shot a lot of moose, elk, and deer with them.
I would be mildly curious to see how the replacement rifles for those 8mms from Sweden stack up. I.e. how many are replaced by a new rifle in 30/06 for example, or 6.5x55, versus the North American general view that if it ain't some flavour of magnum, it ain't shyte. That's a real generalization of course, but none of my younger acquaintances from work and other activities are buying 30/06s, and 270s; some are buying .308s because it's a sniper round, y'know. Most opt for the 300 win mag, 7mm Win Mag, the WSM series, etc.
Gun nutz are about worst people for figuring out what drives new gun sales. Particularly new gun sales among hunters who have been hunting with a rifle and caliber long enough to put some respectable wear on that rifle. If we had enough resident Swedes, we could ask them what calibers the popular gun mags over in Sweden have been exclaiming and dropping their guts over for the last decade or so.
I personally have zero interest in an 8mm of any flavour, but with the bullets and velocities it's capable of, it's perfectly fine for the vast majority of big game shot in North America. But who hates the idea of getting a new rifle, still in the box?
Rifle companies make their living off of that... and to start, you have to get people thinking that the new rifle can give them some extra performance that the rifle they've been hunting with can't. Especially if it's in one of the new calibers versus some boring, tired old chambering.