Sweden: About Sweden
From ExecutivePlanet.com
About Sweden
In brief
Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe.
Total population - over 9.2 million. Sweden has a low population density of 21 people per km² (53 per square mile), but with a considerably higher density in the southern half of the country.
Of the population about 13.4% (1.23 million) were born abroad. This reflects the inter-Nordic migrations, earlier periods of labour immigration, and later decades of refugee and family immigration. Sweden has been transformed from a nation of emigration ending after World War I to a nation of immigration from World War II onwards.
About 85% of the population lives in an urban area.
Capital - Stockholm, the largest city in the country (population of 1.3 million in the urban area and with 2 million in the metropolitan area). The second and third largest cities are Gothenburg and Malmö.
Sweden is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government.
Sweden has been a member of the European Union since 1 January 1995 and is a member of the OECD. Swedes have rejected the euro in a popular vote and Sweden maintains its own currency, the Swedish krona (SEK). The Swedish Riksbank founded in 1668 thus is the oldest central bank in the world.
Geography
Sweden is surrounded by Norway (west), Finland (northeast), the Skagerrak, Kattegat and Öresund straits (southwest) and the Baltic Sea (east). It has maritime borders with Denmark, Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and it is also linked to Denmark (southwest) by the Öresund Bridge.
At 449,964 km2 (173,732 sq mi), Sweden is the 55th largest country in the world. It is the 5th largest in Europe, and the largest in Northern Europe. The land area is slightly larger than the U.S. state of California, or equal to Uzbekistan.
Sweden has 25 provinces or ‘landskap’, based on culture, geography and history; Bohuslän, Blekinge, Dalarna, Dalsland, Gotland, Gästrikland, Halland, Hälsingland, Härjedalen, Jämtland, Lapland, Medelpad, Norrbotten, Närke, Skåne, Småland, Södermanland, Uppland, Värmland, Västmanland, Västerbotten, Västergötland, Ångermanland, Öland and Östergötland.
While these provinces serve no political or administrative purpose, they play an important role for people's self-identification. The provinces are usually grouped together in three large lands or parts, the northern Norrland, the central Svealand and southern Götaland. The sparsely populated Norrland encompasses almost 60% of the country.
About 15% of Sweden lies north of the Arctic Circle.
Climate
Most of Sweden has a temperate climate, despite its northern latitude, with four distinct seasons and mild temperatures throughout the year. The country can be divided into three types of climate:
the southernmost part has an oceanic climate, the central part has a humid continental climate and the northernmost part has a subarctic climate.
However, Sweden is much warmer and drier than other places at a similar latitude, and even somewhat further south, mainly because of the Gulf Stream. For example, central and southern Sweden has much warmer winters than many parts of Russia, Canada, and the northern United States.
Because of its high northern latitude, the length of daylight varies greatly. North of the Arctic Circle, the sun never sets for part of each summer, and for part of the winter the sun never rises. The capital of Stockholm's daylight lasts for more than 18 hours in late June, but only around 6 hours in late December. Most of Sweden has between 1,600 to 2,000 hours of sunshine annually.
Temperatures vary greatly from north to south. Southern and central parts of the country have warm summers and cold winters, with average high temperatures of 20 to 25°C (68–77°F) and lows of 12 to 15°C (53–59°F) in the summer, and average temperatures of −4 to 2°C (25–36°F) in the winter. The northern part of the country has shorter, cooler summers and longer, colder and snowier winters, with temperatures that often drop below freezing from September through May. Occasional heatwaves can occur a few times each year, and temperatures above 25 °C (77 °F) occur on many days during the summer, sometimes even in the north. The highest temperature ever recorded in Sweden was 38 °C (100.4 °F) in 1947, while the coldest temperature ever recorded was −52.6°C (−63.7°F) in 1966.
Administration and politics
Sweden is a constitutional monarchy, in which King Carl XVI Gustaf is head of state, but royal power has long been limited to official and ceremonial functions.
The nation's legislative body is the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament), with 349 members, which chooses the Prime Minister. Parliamentary elections are held every four years, on the third Sunday of September.
Each county further divides into a number of municipalities or ‘kommuner’, with a total of 290 municipalities in 2004. Municipal government in Sweden is similar to city commission government and cabinet-style council government. A legislative municipal assembly (‘kommunfullmäktige’) of between 31 and 101 members (always an uneven number) is elected from party-list proportional representation at municipal elections, held every four years in conjunction with the national parliamentary elections.
The municipalities are also divided into a total of 2,512 parishes, or ‘församlingar’ (2000). These have traditionally been a subdivision of the Church of Sweden, but still have importance as districts for census and elections.
Economy and Trade
Sweden is an export-oriented market economy featuring a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labour force. Timber, hydropower, and iron ore constitute the resource base of an economy heavily oriented toward foreign trade. Sweden's engineering sector accounts for 50% of output and exports. Telecommunications, the automotive industry and the pharmaceutical industries are also of great importance. Agriculture accounts for 2 percent of GDP and employment.
The 20 largest (by turnover in 2007) companies registered in Sweden are Volvo, Ericsson, Vattenfall, Skanska, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget, Electrolux, Volvo Personvagnar, TeliaSonera, Sandvik, Scania, ICA, Hennes & Mauritz, Nordea, Preem, Atlas Copco, Securitas, Nordstjernan, and SKF.
Sweden's industry is overwhelmingly in private control; unlike some other industrialized Western countries, such as Austria and Italy, publicly owned enterprises were always of minor importance.
The largest trade flows are with Germany, the United States, Norway, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Finland.
Language
The primary language of Sweden is Swedish, a North Germanic language, related and very similar to Danish and Norwegian, but differing in pronunciation and orthography. Norwegians have little difficulty understanding Swedish, and Danes can also understand it, with slightly more difficulty than the Norwegians.
Although Swedish is the dominant language, it is not the official language. Swedish speaking Finns are Sweden's largest linguistic minority, comprising about 3 percent of Sweden's population and Finnish is recognised as a minority language. Four other minority languages are Meänkieli, Sami, Romani and Yiddish. The issue of whether Swedish should be declared the official language has been raised and the parliament voted on the matter in 2005 but the proposal narrowly failed.
A majority of Swedes understand and speak English thanks to trade links, the popularity of overseas travel, a strong Anglo-American influence and the tradition of subtitling rather than dubbing foreign television shows and films.
Religion
Generally speaking, Sweden is a rather secularised country. Relatively few people practice their religion actively. However, there are some traditions and rituals that even non-religious people gladly keep for they have a general humanistic appeal – christening, confirmation, marriage ceremony and funeral. “One does not have to be religious in order to be a decent person” – a popular saying goes. Besides, churches attract quite a number of people for their choral traditions. Very many Swedes sing in amateur choirs that are ‘connected’ to churches.
The dominant religion is Lutheranism which “replaced” Roman Catholicism in the course of the Protestant Reformation in the 1530s.
The Sami (living in northernmost part of Sweden) originally had their own shamanistic religion, but they were converted to Lutheranism by Swedish missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Some 275,000 Swedes are today members of various free churches, and, in addition, immigration has meant that there are now some 92,000 Roman Catholics and 100,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians living in Sweden.
Because of immigration, Sweden also has a significant Muslim population. Almost half a million are Muslims by tradition, but approximately 5% (25,000) of these actively practise Islam (in the sense of attending Friday prayer and praying five times a day).
