Ok sorry, I was wrong about Sweden - I thought the nation defaulted in the 90ies, but it was in fact 'only' a big chunk of their financial industry[1]. It seems that they came very close though, and the way they resolved it doesn't appear to be by tight economic grip either - the state poured 4% of their GDP into the system. However - and that's an important point that apparently went forgotten in the last US crisis - they also took the chance to regulate the financial industry more tightly, in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Hm, while the economist's article points out how messy the process became, it doesn't makes an evaluation of how the default actually affected the argentinian economy.
I think that Greece and Argentina will make a good examples for comparisons of different approaches, when both recover economically (if they do recover, that is).
[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinion/28iht-edbildt.1.16...