It helps because words describing a profession, a person or something animate are usually male/female. The same goes in Dutch, where "de" refers to male/female and "het" to neutrum.

There are several rules of thumbs which can help foreigners to correctly guess the article in both Swedish and Dutch. Of couse, they'll only be an accurate guess at best, but they can give you a headstart as a novice learner.

Well, it works for many cognates. Haus/house/hus all come from the same word, so if you know that it's "ein/das Haus" you can expect it to be "ett hus/huset" in Swedish. Same with e.g Hund/hound/hund, "ein/der Hund" is masculine so it is of common gender in Swedish "en hund/hunden".