• Capital: Stockholm
    • Government: Parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy
    • Language spoken: Swedish
    • Currency: Krona (SEK)
    • Country code: 46
    • Time zone: CET (GMT + 1 hr)
    • Stockholm airport code: ARN
    • First inhabited as early as 5000 B.C. (est)
    • Population: 9,045,389 (2008 est.) MSN Encarta: Sweden Encyclopedia Article
    • Climate: Temperate continental

  • The Kingdom of Sweden is a parliamentary democracy (with a notional monarchy) that is located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe.

  • Geography and Climate

    Sweden's southern border, and most of its eastern border, is on the Baltic Sea. It borders with Finland on a strip of land in the northeast, and is partially encircled by Norway from the west to the polar north. Sweden is by area the fifth largest country in Europe, but its population is greatly concentrated in urban areas such as Stockholm and Gothenburg, allowing much of the country's land to remain rural or forested. Sweden's climate is temperate in the south, the area of densest population, ranging to sub-arctic in the country's mountainous north. The terrain elsewhere is markedly lower and flatter than that of Norway. Many areas in northern Sweden are covered by permafrost - ground that is frozen all year round, for several years in a row. But now, areas with lowland permafrost are quickly shrinking due to climate change.Science Daily: Permafrost Is Thawing In Northern Sweden (February 19, 20090

  • History

    Sweden has settled down quite a bit since the Viking Age, when driven by overpopulation amid scarce resources, its marauders terrorized Europe and colonized areas including Britain and Newfoundland. Christianity came late to the region, taking hold in stages after the 11th Century, while international commerce took over from military expansionism, despite a flirtation with empire in the 1600s, and another more serious one in the century preceding the 1870s. Since then, Sweden has prided itself on neutrality, good government, and social equality, such that despite its relative lack of natural resources, it has come to battle annually with Norway for the U.N.'s top ranking for the world's highest standard of living.

  • Countries of Scandinavia

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