I found it the easiest of all languages to learn for a native speaker of English (and I have learned 8 others!). The grammar is simple, and many of the words are very similar. I met some students from Sweden on a boat in 1969, and visited them in Sweden in 1970. The language came across to me as total gibberish, but they assured me it really wasn't very complicated. I entered college that fall, and started learning Swedish. The professor, who was from Uppsala, spoke nothing but Swedish from day one. But she was also a brilliant instructor, and she took care at first to use only Swedish words that were similar to their English meanings. When you learn that "bok" means "book," "kom tilbaks i morgon" means "come back tomorrow," and "vi skall se" means "we shall see" etc. you figure out real quick that this is not like trying to learn Hungarian or Mandarin. When you want to conjugate a verb, it is the same form for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, both singular and plural. No exceptions! I go, you go, he goes, we go, they go, it's all "går" (pronounced like gore as in Al Gore). "I'm going home now" is "jag går hem nu." It's really easy to get used to!
After my first year of college, I went back to Sweden, and blew my Swedish friends away by showing them that I needed no more translation help at all. There aren't many languages that are THAT easy to learn, but Swedish is the easiest--at least that was my experience.
= new reply since forum marked as read