With fewer than nine million people, Sweden is a small nation in terms of population - smaller than Belgium and only half as big as the Netherlands. Perhaps this is why foreigners are often surprised when they realize the geographic size of our country. Physically, Sweden is one of the largest countries in Western Europe - larger than California and nearly the same size as Spain or France.

Because of its large area and limited number of inhabitants, Sweden is one of Europe's most sparsely populated countries. Yet it is worth noting that nearly 90 percent of the population lives in the southern part of the country. In Norrland, accounting for nearly 60 percent of Sweden's area, fewer than a million people live. From the vast open spaces of Norrland - sometimes referred to as the last wilderness in Western Europe - come most of the enormous natural resources of forests, ores and hydroelectric power on which the country based its industrialization. About one sixth of Sweden's area lies north of the Arctic Circle, in the region known as Nordkalotten ("The Northern Skull-cap" of Europe), which also includes portions of Norway, Finland and Russia. In all, more than half of Sweden's area consists of forests, mainly coniferous (evergreens). Some 16 percent of the country consists of mountains and fells. Nearly 10 percent is lakes, rivers and wetlands, while only eight percent is cultivated land.

The warm Gulf Stream, which flows past the west coast of Norway, is what makes it at all possible for such a large proportion of Sweden and the rest of the Scandinavian peninsula to be inhabitable and cultivable at all. Areas at similar latitudes elsewhere in the world - for example in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Siberia - consist largely of uninhabited tundra.

Sweden is famous, especially among the Swedes themselves, for its natural beauty. Many people in Sweden love their natural scenery with an almost religious intensity.The country's great length - almost 1,600 kilometers from Treriksröset in the north to Smygehuk in the south - makes the contrasts between its southern, central and northern parts dramatic. In the far north is the vast Lapland wilderness with its treeless fells, low wind-blown forests and inaccessible wetlands. The Scandinavian mountain chain runs roughly north and south along the western border of the country, like a backbone between Sweden and Norway. An overwhelming majority of the rest of northern and central Sweden is covered with deep coniferous forests, interspersed with blue lake systems and rushing rivers that run from the snow-clad peaks of the west down toward the Baltic Sea coast

Along the eastern coast are a diversity of unique natural areas. They include the remarkable High Coast in the north - which is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List - and the unique Stockholm, St. Anne and Västervik archipelagoes with their tens of thousands of mainly uninhabited islands, isles and skerries. The west coast of Sweden runs northward to bare, pink-shaded islands that extend toward the Norwegian fjords. In the Baltic Sea off the east coast of Sweden are two major islands, Gotland and Öland, both unique in their natural scenery, with spiny limestone coasts and flowering beachside meadows, heaths and bare limestone plains, boasting a richness of species otherwise found in far more southerly climes. Skåne extends across the southern end of the country. It is Sweden's richest and most fertile agricultural province, with rolling plains, gently rounded hills, murmuring deciduous forests and endless sandy beaches. So large is our country, and so few are the Swedes, that wild natural scenery is within reach of everyone - a priceless luxury, but also a self-evident right that is also free of charge.

Characteristic of our northerly natural scenery is the radical changes of season. The landscape really sheds its skin and changes its garb four times a year, with constant shifts and strong nuances of color. Sweden's northerly geographic location gives the country an extreme climate, nevertheless made gentler by the warm Gulf Stream that runs nearby in the North Atlantic Ocean. Foreign visitors often find the light conditions prevailing in our country even more extreme. During the spring, the days become longer and brighter, culminating in late June when the sun shines around the clock in the northern part of the country. Darkness sets in for only a few hours in the southern regions, and even then it is more like a kind of mystical half-light. These bright nights occur throughout Sweden from late May into August. In Lapland, the midnight sun is a phenomenon that attracts hordes of visitors from all over the globe every year.
The opposite of summer's "white nights" - the compact Nordic winter darkness - has also become a tourist attraction, though on a more modest scale. Visitors from afar travel nowadays to Lapland to experience total winter darkness, massive silence and severe cold, with temperatures dropping to minus 30 degrees Celsius or lower. They can also enjoy the mighty colored-light symphony known as the aurora borealis (northern lights) playing across the sky It is a phenomenon that occurs during winter at magnetic midnight, 10 p.m., when green-yellow, red or red-violet lights illuminate the Arctic sky.