Geography of Sweden
Overview of the geography of Sweden
Sweden is a country in Northern Europe on the Scandinavian Peninsula. It borders Norway to the west (which is one of Sweden’s non-EU neighbours); Finland to the northeast; and the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Bothnia to the south and east. At 450,295 km2 (173,860 sq mi), Sweden is the largest country in Northern Europe, the fifth largest in Europe, and the 55th largest country in the world.
Sweden has a 3,572 km (2,220 mi) long coastline on its east, and the Scandinavian mountain chain (Skanderna) on its western border, separating it from Norway. It has maritime borders with Denmark, Germany, Poland, Russia (another non-EU neighbour) Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and it is also linked to Denmark (southwest) by the Öresund bridge. It has an Exclusive Economic Zone of 160,885 km2 (62,118 mi2).
Terrain
Much of Sweden is heavily forested, with 69% of the country being forest and woodland, while farmland constitutes only 8% of land use. Sweden consists of 39,960 km2
of water area, constituting around 95,700 lakes. The lakes are sometimes used for water power plants, especially the large northern rivers and lakes.
Most of northern and western central Sweden consists of vast tracts of hilly and mountainous land called the Norrland terrain.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Geography of Sweden” is overview of the geography of Sweden. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Geography, Sweden and Overview, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “overview of the geography of Sweden” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1771444. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Geography of Sweden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.