Cities, Population, Communication

Cities and lodging

Distance between the most important Swedish cities: Malmö-Stockholm: 619 km
Malmö-Göteborg: 276 km
Göteborg-Stockholm: 484 km
Stockholm-Luleå: 958 km

Total population: 9,011,000 persons

Population in major cities (including suburbs): Stockholm: 1, 873,000
Göteborg : 872,000
Malmö : 599,000

About 90% of Sweden’s inhabitants live in communities with more than 2,000 residents. The most densely populated areas lie in the triangle formed by the three largest cities – Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö – and along the Baltic coastline north of the capital. The interior of Norrland is very sparsely populated, which creates problems in supplying adequate services and transportation facilities to its inhabitants.

By means of heavy government subsidies, the country’s housing stock has been modernized very rapidly, and nearly all inhabitants live in homes which are technically very well equipped, even in the countryside. Nearly half of the housing stock consists of single-family homes, but apartment buildings predominiate in larger cities.

Over a long period of history, Swedish farmers lived together in small villages with common grazing lands and allotments in common croplands. During the 18th and 19th centuries the central government implemented a major series of reforms that divided up the commons, brought together the scattered allotments of each farming family and moved their farmhouse to their “new” consolidated property. These reforms accelerated the technical development of Swedish agriculture but also had social consequences.

An abundance of second homes is characteristic of Sweden. There are large areas of recently built summer cottages along the coasts and lakes, especially near the three largest cities, but city dwellers have also acquired abandoned crofts and small farms. Construction is regulated to ensure that beaches and other valuable natural areas are accessible to everyone.

Communications

Good transportation and communications systems have always been vital to a country of Sweden’s size and sparse population. The central government that emerged in the 16th century organized the country’s road network and transportation system. For centuries, maritime shipping was dominant, with Stockholm as the main Baltic port. During the 17th century, Göteborg (Gothenburg) was established as an exporting harbor. Exports of timber led to the creation of ports along the Norrland coast.

In the mid-19th century, the Swedish government built a nationwide network of railroad trunk lines. The railroads and new steelmaking processes made it possible to begin mining the large high-phosphorus ore deposits of the north. Hydroelectric power was transmitted from the major waterfalls of Norrland to industrial plants and large cities further south. Nuclear power plants at four locations along the southern and central Swedish coasts have supplemented this north-to-south electric power system. Following a decision by Parliament, one of these nuclear power plants (located near the coast of Denmark) was shut down in 2005.

There is an extensive network of highways, with freeways (motorways) following the triangle between the three largest cities and continuing to the north. Remote rural areas usually have very good main highways, often constructed as government-financed relief work projects. In 2000, Sweden and Denmark inaugurated a 16 km (10 mile) long bridge and tunnel across the Öresund straits between Malmö and Copenhagen, the Danish capital. The domestic air traffic network is well developed, and Scandinavian cooperation has resulted in good airline connections with the whole world.

Most Swedish families have their own car. Many cities have an extensive network of bus lines, operated and subsidized by municipal governments and county councils. Large cities have such additional transit amenities as subways, streetcars and commuter trains, which are coordinated with other local transportation facilities. The fixed telecommunications network has been in place for many decades, and today there are also 7 million mobile telephones. Most people in Sweden, except some retirees, have access to the Internet.

Economic geography

Although nowadays less than 3% of Sweden’s labor force works in agriculture and less than 10% of the country’s area consists of farmland, agriculture is still an important sector of the Swedish economy. The largest agricultural acreage and the highest productivity are found in southernmost Sweden, where specialization in grain and pork production predominates, and in the plains of central Sweden. In Norrland, the production of fodder crops, meat and milk predominates. Farming takes place as far north as the border with Finland, where an intensive summer season and fertile river sediments provide good conditions for growing vegetables.

Nearly all Swedish farms are operated by individual families and are relatively small, but in the most important agricultural districts, larger units also exist. Despite a sharp reduction in the number of farms and crop acreage, production has increased, and with the exception of a few products, Sweden is self-sufficient in agriculture. However, Sweden’s membership in the European Union since 1995 has led to increased two-way trade with other EU countries in agricultural products and foodstuffs.

Of Sweden’s forest land, 10% (mostly in the north) is owned by Swedish state companies, while private companies own 40% (mainly in north central Sweden) and individual owners, mainly farmers, own 50%.

Fishing is a small sector of the national economy nowadays. Because fishing zones have been redrawn by international agreements, Sweden has lost some of its traditional fishing areas in the North Sea and the emphasis has shifted to the Baltic Sea.

Mining has diminished in relative importance, but in northern Sweden the iron ore fields of Kiruna are at the center of a railroad line from the Baltic steel mill center of Luleå and the ice-free Atlantic export harbor of Narvik, Norway.

Sweden’s rich natural resources – its forests, ore deposits and hydroelectric power – constitute the historical basis of its industrial economy, but the emphasis has shifted toward increasingly advanced products, often still based on such indigenous raw materials as timber and metals.

The timber and wood product industry is, of course, located close to its sources of raw material. The pulp and paper industry is often situated at the mouths of rivers running through forest regions — including a number along the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia and of Vänern, Sweden’s largest lake. Production is concentrated at large, efficient mills, nowadays also including units located in southern Sweden.

Sweden’s metal industry still follows a pattern from the days when water power and timberland (for charcoal fuel) determined the location of iron mills. Sweden’s metal industry is thus still concentrated in Bergslagen, where some smaller units face increasing competition from larger production sites abroad. The iron and steel mills in coastal Oxelösund and Luleå were built in the 20th century. Otherwise, metal-based industries are dispersed throughout southern and central Sweden and along the Norrland coast.

The automotive and aerospace industry has its main plants in south central Sweden (Göteborg, Trollhättan, Linköping, Södertälje). The electronics industry is concentrated in Stockholm and Västerås.

The pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries are important, especially in the university cities of east central Sweden and in Skåne, where the new bridge/tunnel across the Öresund has encouraged even closer links with similar companies in Denmark.

Distributive trade, transportation, administration and services comprise a larger percentage of the national economy than industry in terms of employees, but account for a small but increasing proportion of exports. This sector is concentrated mainly in major cities, especially Stockholm.

Population

Like the animal population, the first human beings are believed to have migrated into Scandinavia from the south after the ice cap withdrew northward, but some of the population, probably including the Sami people, came from the east.

About 1,000 years ago a central Swedish realm began to take shape, with its core in the fertile farmlands and waterways around Lake Mälaren. By the 16th century, when Sweden became a centralized state, the country had fewer than a million inhabitants within its present-day borders. During the 19th century, when Sweden enjoyed peace, the population began to grow rapidly. This resulted in a large wave of migration to the expanding forestry operations and wood product industry of Norrland, to industrial jobs in Swedish urban areas, as well as abroad to the cities and prairies of North America. Over a million of the country’s inhabitants emigrated during the period 1865–1914.

From an ethnic standpoint, Sweden has traditionally been a very homogeneous country. Swedish – a Germanic language – has historically been the mother tongue of nearly the entire population, and some 80% of the population belong to the Lutheran Church of Sweden. However, since World War II, the ethnic and religious composition of the population has changed and today roughly 12% of Swedish residents are foreign-born. Most immigrants have come from the neighboring Nordic countries, with which Sweden has a common labor market, and from elsewhere in Europe. For non-EU nationals, immigration is strictly regulated today but Sweden still accepts certain categories of immigrants and refugees.

In addition, Sweden has two minority groups of native inhabitants: the Finnish-speaking people of the northeast, along the Finnish border (about 30,000) and the Sami (Lapp) population of about 15,000. The Sami are scattered throughout the northern Swedish interior and in nearby northerly areas of Norway, Finland and Russia, numbering between 50,000 and 60,000 in all. Once a hunting and fishing people, they developed a reindeer herding system which they carry out very efficiently today, although most Sami in Sweden have other occupations. The Sami in Sweden have a Sami Parliament, the Sámediggi, which has decision-making authority on certain issues.