The retirement age in Sweden is 65, or possibly a few years above that. What we have is two pension systems. The first one offers a guaranteed pension with a fixed amount of money, which you are allowed to take out when you are 65 years or older. On top of this guaranteed pension we have another pension which depends on the amount of years you have worked and the salary you had during your last 5 years.
If you do not want to retire, then you are actually also allowed to keep working until you are 75. The company cannot fire you until then.
On the other hand, you could actually stop working and start to take out your pension right away, but if you do that then you will get far, far less money.
Now, our company has during the previous times offered early retirement to every person who was 58 years or older. This early retirement was actually sort of a paid vacation. Those people got a percentage of their salary for the remaining years until they hit 65, wereupon they will in reality retire and thus get the full pension from the government. However, it is not really the full pension since the second pension system will be reduced due to lowered payments.
This means that the most favorable option, money-wise, is still to work until you are 65. The early-retirement packages that the company offers will result in that you have a couple of years with minimum income, coupled with that your final pension will be quite much lower. However, if you are fed up with work, then it can be very tempting to take an early retirement package. Sure, your income will be lowered quite drastically, but on the other hand, you do not need to work at all.
Well, for me it is still years upon years away. :)
God natt / god morgon