North and South - different countries!

If someone screwed a hinge to the southern tip of Sweden and then turned the whole country over, its northernmost point would end up near Naples. There is a distance of no less than 1,600 kilometres between the southern and northern extremities of the country. This means that the climate and the seasons vary appreciably in different parts of Sweden, as do the animals, the landscape and the people.

A population of nearly 9 million people share between them no less than 450,000 km2. That makes less than 2.0 people per plot of 1,000 m by 1,000 m. Every inhabitant should thus in theory have a block of land 50,000 square metres in area at his disposal! Of course, people do tend to live in concentrated areas, but whether you'd love to stay somewhere as nice as the Britannia Hotel Birmingham or even start your own hotel out in the country, start a farm, go hiking or camping, there's more than enough countryside for everyone here in Sweden!

But in reality, Swedes have squeezed together into quite a compact mass. A third of them live in the three big cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo, all of which are situated in the southern half of the country. Only 20 per cent of the population live in the northern and western forest counties which account for 70 per cent of the country's surface area. The population density is thus very unevenly distributed. In Stockholm county there are 258 inhabitants per square kilometre, while in Norrbotten county there are only three.

Sweden also has a lot of water. There are 96,000 lakes, large and small, which together with the nation's wetlands cover approximately one fifth of the country's surface. Cultivated land accounts for some eight per cent of the area, as do fells and mountains. Urban settlements occupy a few per cent. The rest, half the country, is covered by forest.

The forests are dominated by firs and pines. The evergreen coniferous forests are the green gold of Sweden, and have made the single biggest contribution to its prosperity. Only in Skone, in the south, and on the West Coast are deciduous species predominant. Beyond the margins of the dense forest, the whole country offers a living and varied aspect. Mountains merging into open meadows, small lakes and streams, paddocks, groves and glades, wetlands and vast tracts of bushy scrub.

In the far south you will find the wide plains with the most productive and monotonous agricultural land, and also the most limited biodiversity. The southern coasts are even and low-lying, often with shallow, sandy beaches. To the north the land becomes rolling, with plains in Vaster-gotland, Ostergotland, the Lake Malaren valley and around Uppsala. In central Sweden, the countryside is made up of softly rolling hills and dales. These become extensive archipelagos when they hit the sea. The Stockholm archipelago alone contains thousands of islands of various sizes.

Farther north, the rolling character of the landscape becomes increasingly marked, and in the inland regions of northern Sweden mountains form, while the the coastal region of the Gulf of Bothnia is fairly flat. The highest peaks are found in Sarek and Kebnekaise, a little over 2,000 metres above sea level. The mountainous parts of the country vary greatly. Majestic peaks, extensive plateaus, inaccessible mountain massifs and open heath, meadows and willow thickets. In the polar far north of the country, there are perennially white glaciers and constantly frozen swamps.

A tough environment for plants? Certainly, but you can also find an almost unique luxuriance that is astonishing at these latitudes. In the valleys the dwarf birch forests spread, along with heathers (Cassiope tetragona), globeflower, Nordic monkshood and mountain angelica. Above the tree line, some 1,000 metres above sea level, bush and scrub are the dominant types of vegetation, often in the form of willow thickets along with various species of berries, heather and sedge. Even up to 2,000 metres, the glacier buttercup may be found. Otherwise, there are few species of stemmed plants at these heights, although many varieties of lichen and moss thrive here.

This region is northern Lapland, a familiar name to children throughout the world who long before Christmas send their wishlists to Father Christmas, Lapland. This part of Sweden is also called the Land of the Midnight Sun. For a few weeks around Midsummer, when the sun reaches its northernmost point and starts heading south again, we can see it 24 hours a day. And regardless of where in the country you are, midsummer nights are never completely dark. The light evenings last into August in most parts of Sweden.

But you must enjoy the sunlight while you can, as six months later the sun is quite invisible if you live north of the arctic circle. But that doesn't mean it's pitch dark - with the snow covering the ground the world is brightened by all the reflected light.

In the far north of Sweden the winter is long and cold. For some seven months the temperature is below freezing, with the February average around -12 to -150 C. At times, the thermometer falls below -400, the coldest recorded temperature being -53°C (-127.4°F). The average July temperature is only around 12 to 15°C. This means that in the mountains much of the ground is frozen solid all year round.

Even in the far south of the country there are relatively few hours of winter sunshine. But the climate is much milder. It is just below freezing in Skone, the southernmost province, in February and it is unusual for the snow cover to stay long. In July the average temperature is 17 to 18°C.

This means there is a vast difference between summer and winter in Sweden. Perhaps that is why Swedes are so desperate to get out into the open air in the sun and the heat, and wait so impatiently for spring to arrive. The accepted sign that spring has come is for the average temperature to have risen above zero for a few days in a row. In southern Sweden this usually occurs towards the end of February. But it can take up to two months for spring to make its presence felt in the whole country. And by then the sorely missed light has also returned.

By then, too, Swedes have been busily keeping watch out for the other telltale signs of spring. The first snowdrops in the garden, and the first coltsfoot by the roadside. The newspapers carry daily reports about starlings, lapwings, larks and other migratory birds returning from their sojourn in more southerly climes. Spring fashions are displayed in shop windows and winter clothes are put away — but often grabbed back out again, as the spring is moody, and capable of showing itself only to disappear again.

Sweden is situated on roughly the same latitude as Alaska and Siberia, and Stockholm lies on the same latitude as southern Greenland. So why isn't the climate any harsher? For this we can thank the Gulf Stream, which carries warm water from the West Indies across the Atlantic, warming the winds which in turn help make the temperatures in Scandinavia relatively pleasant and, in fact, often surprisingly warm.

But it was not like this 10,000 years ago. Then, the whole of Scandinavia was covered by a layer of ice that was three kilometres thick in places. This socalled inland ice was so heavy it depressed the land level and put an end to all life. Since then the Scandinavian peninsula has been rising from the sea again, and Sweden is still in the process of regaining the land contours it once had. The northern part of the country is still rising at a rate of about 1 cm a year, the southern part 1 mm. This rising of the land is set to continue for thousands of years yet, and may ultimately expose the whole of the Gulf of Bothnia, the northernmost part of the Baltic.