119 Fun Facts About Sweden

Stockholm's centre is spread across how many islands?

Stockholm's centre is spread across 14 islands where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic, which is why so many of the city's roads run through tunnels and over bridges.

Which Swedish city has the largest port in the Nordic countries?

Gothenburg has the largest port in the Nordic countries. It was founded in 1621 as a largely Dutch trading colony, which is why Dutch engineers laid out its centre around canals, as in Amsterdam.

What is Sweden's third-largest city?

Malmö is Sweden's third-largest city, but it grew up Danish: one of Denmark's biggest towns in the 1400s, it went into a long decline after passing to Sweden in 1658 and losing its Danish trading privileges.

The Öresund Bridge carries road and rail from Sweden across the strait to which foreign capital?

Copenhagen. The bridge stops at an artificial island and the last 4 km run through a tunnel, built so that ships keep a clear channel and planes using Copenhagen Airport a clear approach.

Why did the Swedish Arctic city of Kiruna decide in 2004 to relocate its centre?

Ground subsidence from its iron mine is creeping under the old centre, so Kiruna is moving east; in 2025 its 672-tonne church, finished in 1912, was rolled 5 km to the new site in one piece.

Which is Sweden's largest island?

Gotland is Sweden's largest island. The 13th-century wall around its main town, Visby, shut the merchants off from the island's own country traders, and the quarrel broke into civil war in 1288.

What is the largest lake in Sweden?

Vänern is the largest lake in Sweden. It is big enough for seagoing ships, which climb the locks of the Trollhätte Canal from the Kattegat to reach lake ports such as Karlstad.

What is the highest mountain in Sweden?

Kebnekaise is Sweden's highest mountain; its glaciated southern summit has melted so much that since 2018 the ice-free northern summit, about 2,097 metres, has been the higher of the two.

Sweden's National Day, 6 June, marks the 1523 election of which king?

Gustav Vasa was elected king at Strängnäs on 6 June 1523, ending Danish rule over Sweden; he went on to lead the country into the Protestant Reformation.

King Gustavus Adolphus was killed at Lützen in 1632 during which war?

Thirty Years' War. In the gun smoke and fog at Lützen the king was cut off from his riders and shot; his army fought on and won the battle without him.

Charles XII's army was crushed by Russia in July 1709 at which battle?

Charles XII's army was destroyed at Poltava on 8 July 1709; the king, already wounded in the foot, escaped south and lived in exile in the Ottoman Empire until 1714.

Charles XII was shot dead in 1718 during which war with Russia?

Great Northern War. Charles XII was shot through the head before Fredriksten fortress; within three years Sweden had made peace, giving up its Baltic provinces and its standing as a great power.

The reigning Swedish royal house, Bernadotte, was founded by a marshal in the service of which emperor?

Napoleon made Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte a marshal. Elected heir to Sweden's childless king in 1810, Bernadotte then turned on his old master and led an army against him at Leipzig in 1813.

In 1809 Sweden lost which territory, long its eastern part, to Imperial Russia?

Finland went to Russia under the Treaty of Fredrikshamn in September 1809. The defeat had already cost King Gustav IV Adolf his throne, in a coup by his own army officers that March.

A 1994 referendum approved Sweden's entry into which body?

The European Union. Sweden joined on 1 January 1995, yet when a second referendum came in 2003 its voters turned down the union's single currency.

Which NATO member held up Sweden's bid for over a year, demanding action against Kurdish groups?

Turkey. Its parliament ratified only in January 2024, after Sweden had tightened its anti-terrorism laws; Hungary, the last holdout, followed a month later and Sweden joined that March.

In 1973 Carl XVI Gustaf succeeded which relative?

His grandfather, Gustaf VI Adolf. His father had died in a 1947 plane crash, and the new king at once dropped the centuries-old style 'King of Sweden, the Goths and the Wends' for plain 'King of Sweden'.

Which palace on the island of Lovön is the permanent home of Sweden's king and queen?

Drottningholm, where the king and queen live in the south wing. Its 1760s theatre was left as a storeroom after 1792 and restored in the 1920s; the wooden stage machinery is still worked by hand.

What is the name of Sweden's 349-seat national parliament?

Riksdag. It had 350 seats until the 1973 election left government and opposition with 175 each; one seat was cut from 1976 so that the chamber could never again split down the middle.

Alfred Nobel patented which invention in 1867?

Dynamite. An 1864 blast at the family's Stockholm works killed Nobel's younger brother Emil, and Alfred set out to make nitroglycerin safer to handle, soaking it into a porous earth called kieselguhr.

After the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, the laureates attend a banquet in which building?

The City Hall has hosted the banquet since 1930. The king hands each laureate a medal and diploma at the Concert Hall, then joins about 1,300 guests for dinner, 250 of them students.

Which Swedish UN Secretary-General died in a 1961 plane crash in Africa?

Dag Hammarskjöld was flying to ceasefire talks with the leader of Katanga, a breakaway province of the Congo, when his plane came down near Ndola in what is now Zambia.

Which Swedish prime minister was shot dead on a Stockholm street in February 1986?

Olof Palme was shot from behind on Sveavägen as he walked home from a cinema with his wife. The only man convicted was later freed on appeal, and the investigation closed in 2020 with the murder unsolved.

In Sweden, the main Midsummer's Eve celebrations always fall on which day of the week?

Friday. The official holiday, Midsummer Day, is the Saturday, but the party is the evening before: workplaces and many shops shut, and people leave town to raise a maypole and dance around it.

The Swedish ritual of fika centres on which drink?

Coffee, usually with a bun or pastry on the side. The habit had to survive the state first: from 1756 Sweden's governments banned coffee five separate times, and each ban failed.

Sweden's candle-crowned processions each 13 December honour which saint?

Saint Lucia, a martyr from Syracuse in Sicily. Under the old Julian calendar the night before her feast was reckoned the longest of the year, which made her the north's bearer of light.

Surströmming, infamous for its smell, is a fermented version of which fish?

Herring from the Baltic. It goes on fermenting inside the sealed tin, so the cans bulge, and in 2006 several big airlines banned them from flights as a possible explosion risk.

Swedish meatballs are traditionally served with jam made from which berry?

Lingonberry jam works more like ketchup than a spread: Swedes spoon the tart preserve beside meatballs, pancakes, porridge and black pudding, yet rarely put it on bread.

Since 1999, Swedes have marked 4 October as a day devoted to which baked treat?

Cinnamon bun. Kanelbullens dag sounds like an old custom, but it was invented in 1999 by Sweden's Home Baking Council as a way to get more people baking at home.

Which state-owned chain is the only retailer allowed to sell wine, spirits and strong beer in Sweden?

Systembolaget. Its roots lie in an 1850 scheme in Dalarna to keep the profit from selling alcohol out of private hands, and its shops are barred from offering discounts.

What does the Swedish principle of allemansrätten give people?

Free access to roam the countryside holds even on land someone else owns: anyone may hike across it, pitch a tent for a night or two and pick berries and mushrooms, so long as they do no harm and leave no litter.

Which entrepreneur founded IKEA in 1943, when he was 17 years old?

Ingvar Kamprad started it with money his father gave him for doing well at school. The name is his initials plus Elmtaryd, the farm he grew up on, and Agunnaryd, the village nearby.

The car brand Volvo takes its name from a Latin word meaning what?

'I roll' is a fitting motto for a firm born inside a ball-bearing maker: Volvo began in 1927 as a subsidiary of SKF, where co-founder Assar Gabrielsson was a sales manager.

Which Swedish entrepreneur co-founded the music streaming service Spotify in 2006?

Daniel Ek founded it with Martin Lorentzon when record sales were collapsing under file-sharing and illegal downloads; Spotify was built as the legal alternative to piracy.

H&M's original name, Hennes, is Swedish for what?

Hennes means 'hers'; Erling Persson's first shop, opened in Västerås in 1947, sold only women's clothing, and the Mauritz came with the 1968 purchase of a hunting outfitter.

Which game did Swedish programmer Markus 'Notch' Persson begin as a hobby project in 2009?

Minecraft. Its instant success led Persson to found the studio Mojang, and in 2014 Microsoft bought the company for a reported $2.5 billion.

Which puzzle game did Swedish company King launch on Facebook in 2012?

Candy Crush Saga. The Stockholm-founded studio behind it was bought by Activision Blizzard in 2016, which was itself swallowed by Microsoft in 2023.

ABBA won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with which song?

'Waterloo' won in Brighton even though the host country's jury gave it no points at all. ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus has suggested the British were guarding their own favourite, Olivia Newton-John.

Which annual televised song contest chooses Sweden's entry for Eurovision?

Melodifestivalen has picked Sweden's entry almost every year since 1959, and it is no formality: ABBA finished only third there in 1973, a year before going on to win Eurovision.

Which singer won Eurovision for Sweden in both 2012 and 2023?

Loreen won with 'Euphoria' and 'Tattoo', the first woman to take the title twice. Her second victory brought the 2024 contest to Sweden exactly fifty years after ABBA's win.

Roxette paired Per Gessle with which singer?

Marie Fredriksson and Gessle cracked America by a fluke: an exchange student took their album home to Minneapolis, a radio station there began playing 'The Look', and it went to number one.

Avicii was the stage name of which Swedish DJ?

Tim Bergling took his stage name from Avīci, the lowest level of hell in Buddhism. He died in 2018 aged 28, and three years later Stockholm's Globe, where he had played, was renamed Avicii Arena.

Which Swedish producer wrote Britney Spears's debut hit '...Baby One More Time'?

Max Martin started out as the frontman of a glam-metal band, It's Alive. Its record deal brought him to Stockholm's Cheiron label, where he swapped the microphone for the producer's chair and pop.

Which striker is Sweden's all-time top men's scorer, with 62 goals?

Zlatan Ibrahimović scored his 62 goals in 122 internationals. One of them, a long-range overhead kick against England, won FIFA's Puskás Award for the best goal of the year.

Which Swede won five Wimbledon singles titles in a row?

Björn Borg won eleven Grand Slam titles in eight years, six of them at the French Open, then stunned tennis by walking away from the sport in 1983, aged only 26.

Which Swede's record 86 alpine World Cup wins stood until Mikaela Shiffrin passed it in 2023?

Ingemar Stenmark built the record without ever winning a downhill: all 86 victories, from 1974 to 1989, came in the two turning events, 46 in giant slalom and 40 in slalom.

Which Louisiana-born pole vaulter competes for Sweden, his mother's country?

Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis grew up in Lafayette, the son of an American pole vaulter and a Swedish heptathlete, and chose to jump for his mother's country; he first took the world record in 2020.

What is the nickname of Sweden's men's national ice hockey team?

Tre Kronor means 'Three Crowns', the national emblem the players wear on their jerseys. Sweden's first Olympic hockey gold, in 1994, came down to a penalty shootout settled by Tommy Salo's save.

Which Swedish author created Pippi Longstocking?

Astrid Lindgren made Pippi up at the bedside of her sick daughter Karin, who had invented the name herself; she later wrote the stories down and gave Karin the manuscript as a birthday present.

Which publisher famously rejected the Pippi Longstocking manuscript before it found a home?

Bonniers turned the manuscript down in 1944; the author then entered a revised version in a Rabén & Sjögren competition, and that house published Pippi Longstocking in 1945.

Which Swedish director lived on the island of Fårö and shot Persona there?

Ingmar Bergman first went to Fårö to film Through a Glass Darkly, on the advice of his cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and never really left: he made several more films there and died on the island in 2007.

Stieg Larsson died in 2004, before which of his works was published?

The Millennium trilogy. When a heart attack killed Larsson at 50, publishers had only just accepted his first two thrillers and a third lay finished; the books came out from 2005 and he never saw their success.

Unlike today's version, Anders Celsius's original temperature scale put the boiling point of water at what value?

0 was where water boiled on Celsius's own scale, and 100 was where it froze, so a hotter day meant a lower number. The scale was soon turned the other way round.

Carl Linnaeus formalised which system?

Binomial nomenclature gives every species a two-part Latin name, such as Homo sapiens. Linnaeus also sorted the whole plant kingdom into classes by counting each flower's sexual parts, its stamens and pistils.

To which branch of the Indo-European languages does Swedish belong?

Germanic, in its northern or Nordic group. Oddly, Swedish had no official status in its own country until 2009, when a language law first declared it Sweden's main language.

What colour is the cross on the flag of Sweden?

Yellow, or 'golden yellow' in the wording of the law. The flag dates from the 1500s, but its shades were fixed only in 1906, when the old blue, dark enough to look almost black, was swapped for today's lighter one.

Sweden voted against adopting the euro in a referendum held in which year?

In the September 2003 referendum, 56% voted no on a turnout of 82%, so Sweden kept the krona.

Why did the warship Vasa sink on its 1628 maiden voyage?

Instability: Vasa was top-heavy, with too much weight high in the hull and too little ballast, so the first stiff wind heeled the ship over and water poured in through its open lower gunports. Vasa was raised in 1961.

The Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi is rebuilt each winter from ice cut from which river?

The Icehotel is built each winter from ice harvested from the Torne river beside the village; even the glasses in its bar are made of ice, and the first version opened in 1989.

On 'Dagen H', 3 September 1967, what did Sweden switch overnight?

From left- to right-hand traffic. Every vehicle stopped at 4:50 a.m., crossed the road and set off again at 5:00, although 83 percent of voters had rejected the change in a 1955 referendum.

More than a million Swedes emigrated between 1850 and 1930, most of them to which country?

United States. Farmland was running short at home while cheap homestead land was opening in the Midwest, and more of the emigrants settled in Minnesota than in any other state.

In 1397 Sweden and its two Scandinavian neighbours were joined under one crown by what name?

The Kalmar Union was created by Queen Margaret I of Denmark in 1397; Sweden broke away for good in 1523 after the Stockholm Bloodbath of 1520 provoked a revolt.

A short war in 1814 forced which country into a union with Sweden that lasted until 1905?

Norway. It had declared independence that May with a constitution of its own, and after about two weeks of fighting Sweden let it keep that constitution inside the union.

The Swedish name Sverige is a compound translating as what?

Realm of the Swedes: Sverige is a worn-down form of Svea rike. English went another way, taking 'Sweden' from Dutch or Low German around 1600 in place of its older 'Swedeland'.

Which Viking Age trading centre was founded around 750 AD on an island in Lake Mälaren?

Birka stood on the island of Björkö. Lake Mälaren was then an inlet of the Baltic, so ships could reach the town from the open sea; it was abandoned in the later 900s.

Sweden's three traditional 'lands' are Norrland, Svealand and what?

Götaland, the southern land, is named for the Geats, who had a kingdom of their own before it was joined with Svealand to form Sweden.

After marching his army over the frozen Belts in 1658, Charles X of Sweden forced Denmark to sign which treaty?

Roskilde. Denmark gave up Skåne, Halland and Blekinge, which is why Sweden's southern tip is Swedish today; Bornholm and Trøndelag were handed back two years later.

Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin gave the world which car safety feature in 1959?

Three-point seat belt. Bohlin had designed ejector seats for fighter planes before Volvo hired him, and Volvo then let rival carmakers use his belt design for free in the interest of safety.

A 1593 church assembly that confirmed the Church of Sweden as Lutheran met in which city?

The Uppsala Synod of 1593 adopted the Augsburg Confession for the Church of Sweden; Duke Charles called it to block his Catholic nephew Sigismund, who was king of both Poland and Sweden.

Sweden's botched switch to the Gregorian calendar gave the year 1712 which extra date?

30 February 1712 existed only in Sweden: the country had dropped one leap day in 1700 on its way to the Gregorian calendar, gave up, and added a day back to rejoin the Julian one.

The term Stockholm syndrome comes from a six-day 1970s hostage crisis at what kind of business?

A bank: a robber held four Kreditbanken employees in one of its vaults, and a Swedish criminologist coined the term for the bond the captives seemed to form with him.

In 1979 Sweden became the first country in the world to outlaw which widely accepted practice?

Smacking children was banned outright by a change to Sweden's parenting code, though until then more than half of Swedes had seen physical punishment as a necessary part of raising a child.

Sweden's prinsesstårta, a domed cream cake, traditionally wears a coat of marzipan in which colour?

Green marzipan is the classic finish, and the cake was at first simply called 'green cake' before being renamed for three Swedish princesses said to be especially fond of it.

Which wireless standard, born at Ericsson in Lund, Sweden, is named after a tenth-century Viking king?

Bluetooth honours Harald Bluetooth, who united the Danish tribes into one kingdom just as the radio link was meant to unite devices, and its logo merges the runes for his initials.

Which device designed by Rune Elmqvist was first fully implanted in a patient in Sweden in 1958?

A pacemaker went into Arne Larsson, and although that first unit failed within hours he went on to receive 26 of them and outlived both the inventor and the surgeon.

Sweden hosted the 1958 FIFA World Cup and lost the final 5–2 to which country?

Brazil won its first world title that day in Solna, where a 17-year-old Pelé scored twice and became the youngest scorer a World Cup final had seen.

The Swedish word lagom, rooted in a phrase meaning 'according to law', is usually translated as what?

Just the right amount is the usual gloss, neither too much nor too little, and a well-worn Swedish proverb built on the word insists that this middle measure is best.

Swedish climate activist Thunberg reached a 2019 UN summit in New York by what means of transport?

A racing yacht, the 60-foot Malizia II, carried her from Plymouth to New York, drawing its power on board from solar panels and underwater turbines.

Which Nobel Prize is presented in Oslo, Norway, while all the others are awarded in Stockholm?

Peace is the exception because Alfred Nobel's will gave that one prize to a Norwegian committee, and nobody knows why: Norway and Sweden shared a king when he died.

Which currency, which replaced the riksdaler in the 1870s, does Sweden use instead of the euro?

Krona means 'crown', and Denmark and Norway chose the same word for their own money when the three countries tied their currencies together.

Which Swedish carmaker grew out of a company founded in 1937 to build military aircraft?

Saab was set up to supply the Swedish Air Force and turned to cars only in 1945, launching its first production model, the Saab 92, four years later.

Swedish-born engineer Gideon Sundback perfected which everyday fastener in the 1910s?

The zipper got its name only later, from rubber galoshes that closed with a single zip of the hand; until then the device was sold as the hookless fastener.

Which metal used in light-bulb filaments takes its English name from the Swedish for 'heavy stone'?

Tungsten was the old Swedish name for a dense mineral, yet most European languages call the metal wolfram instead, which is why its chemical symbol is W.

Which Swedish diplomat saved thousands of Jews in Budapest before vanishing into Soviet custody?

Raoul Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered people in buildings he declared Swedish territory, until Soviet agents detained him in January 1945 and he disappeared.

Which Swedish queen gave up her throne in 1654, converted to Catholicism and settled in Rome?

Christina also refused to marry, went on to be the guest of a string of popes, and is one of the few women buried in the Vatican Grottoes.

New Sweden, a colony founded in 1638 and later seized by the Dutch, lay along which American river?

The Delaware carried the colony for only 17 years, with settlements on both shores across four future US states, before New Netherland absorbed it in 1655.

Swedish Vikings who founded Kievan Rus' and guarded Byzantine emperors went by which name?

Varangians worked the rivers of eastern Europe as traders and warriors, and from the 10th century the emperors in Constantinople kept a unit of them as elite personal bodyguards.

Which Stockholm-born star of Ninotchka and Camille quit Hollywood after just 28 feature films?

Greta Garbo bowed out after the poorly reviewed Two-Faced Woman in 1941 and spent a long retirement shunning publicity and collecting paintings by the likes of Renoir.

In Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, a knight returning to Sweden plays which game against Death?

Chess buys the knight time: he believes he will live for as long as the match lasts, while the plague ravages the country around him.

Which Swedish pop group's debut album, reissued in America as The Sign, was Billboard's top album of 1994?

Ace of Base, three siblings and a friend, were the first act whose debut album produced three number-one singles on Billboard's Mainstream Top 40 chart.

Swedish gamer Felix Kjellberg, who topped YouTube's subscriber chart from 2013, is known by which name?

PewDiePie was finally overtaken in 2019 by the Indian record label T-Series, after a very public months-long race between the two channels for subscribers.

Which author of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Selma Lagerlöf won in 1909 and spent the prize money buying back her father's estate, then in 1914 became the first woman admitted to the Swedish Academy.

Sweden's Vasaloppet, a 90 km race from Sälen to Mora held each March, is contested in which sport?

Cross-country skiing's great mass race dates from 1922 and retraces, in reverse, a journey a fugitive nobleman made in the winter of 1520–21 before he took the throne.

Which Swedish golfer, winner of ten majors, became the first woman since 1945 to play a PGA Tour event?

Annika Sörenstam took her place among the men at the Colonial in Texas, and she was also the first woman to shoot a round of 59 in competition.

Sweden's semla, a cardamom bun filled with almond paste and cream, is tied to which day of the year?

Shrove Tuesday was the last chance for a rich treat before the Lenten fast, but once the fast lapsed Swedes began eating the buns every Tuesday until Easter.

Swedes gather each August in paper hats for a kräftskiva, a party built around eating which animal?

Crayfish became an August ritual because for most of the 20th century Swedish law limited the catch to late summer; the paper lanterns overhead often show the Man in the Moon.

Sweden won an exemption in its EU entry terms so that it could keep selling which tobacco product?

Snus, a moist tobacco tucked under the upper lip, is banned from sale in every other member state under the bloc's rules on tobacco for oral use.

In 1766 Sweden's Riksdag passed what is regarded as the world's first law guaranteeing which right?

Freedom of the press arrived alongside a second world first in the same act: the public's right to read the official records of the state.

Which indigenous people of northern Sweden have had their own parliament in Kiruna since 1993?

The Sámi are best known for herding reindeer, a livelihood that parts of the Nordic countries reserve for them by law, though only a small minority make a living from the animals.

Which southernmost province of Sweden, home to Lund and Ystad, was Danish until the 17th century?

Skåne, called Scania in English, passed to the Swedish crown when Denmark gave up all of its lands east of the Öresund strait.

Which province, the largest and northernmost in Sweden, covers nearly a quarter of its land area?

Lapland takes in the mining town of Kiruna and the Vindelfjällen mountains, which form one of the largest nature reserves in Sweden.

IKEA opened its first store in Älmhult, in which Swedish province famed for its glassworks?

Småland literally means 'small lands', a nod to the dozen little, largely independent territories that the province was stitched together from.

The royal family's summer home, Solliden, stands in which island province, the smallest in Sweden?

Öland is tied to the mainland by a bridge just over six kilometres long, which was the longest in Europe for a quarter of a century after it opened in 1972.

Which province just north of Stockholm holds the world's densest cluster of Viking runestones?

Uppland has close to 1,200 Viking inscriptions in stone, many of them left by seafarers who came from Roslagen on its coast.

Sweden's historical provinces hold no political power, but each doubles as which ceremonial territory?

A duchy in name only, each province can be given to a royal as a title: Victoria was made Duchess of Västergötland when she became Crown Princess in 1980.

Which Swedish province around Lake Storsjön, with Östersund its only city, was Norwegian until 1645?

Jämtland was conquered by Norway in 1178 and stayed Norwegian for more than 450 years, until the Treaty of Brömsebro handed it to the Swedish crown.

The Bronze Age rock carvings at Tanum, a World Heritage Site, lie in which west-coast Swedish province?

Bohuslän holds thousands of the images across some 600 rock panels, and many of them show boats, some carrying around a dozen passengers.

Sweden's historical provinces lost their administrative role in 1634 to which units, called län?

Counties were the idea of Lord Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, and several were redrawn as late as the 1990s, while the borders of the old provinces have stayed stable for centuries.

Which northern Swedish province shares its name with a hard cheese produced only at one dairy in Burträsk?

Västerbotten cheese is aged for at least a year, and Burträsk claims it was invented there in the 1870s, supposedly by a dairymaid.

Which lake, the third largest in Sweden, empties into the sea through the very centre of Stockholm?

Mälaren flows out through two natural channels, Norrström and Söderström, which pass either side of the small island at the heart of the capital.

About 69% of Sweden is covered by which kind of landscape, while farmland takes up only 8%?

Forest thins out only in the far south, which is mostly agricultural, and its coverage grows steadily the farther north you travel.

Which sea washes the whole of Sweden's long east coast and the Stockholm archipelago?

The Baltic Sea is brackish, and it is too cold and too fresh for the shipworm, so old wooden wrecks survive on its floor for centuries.

Sweden is far milder than other lands at the same latitude thanks largely to which Atlantic current?

The Gulf Stream works together with the prevailing westerly winds to give most of Sweden a temperate climate with four distinct seasons.

In 1909 Sweden became the first country in Europe to set up which kind of protected area?

National parks arrived nine at a time: the Riksdag passed the law in 1909 and the first batch, Abisko among them, opened that same year.

Which arm of the sea off north-east Sweden is so diluted by rivers that pike and perch thrive in it?

The Gulf of Bothnia is so close to fresh water that it freezes over for months every year, and ships using its ports can need icebreakers for half the year.

Which deep, narrow lake, the second largest in Sweden, surrounds the island of Visingsö?

Vättern is so deep that it holds roughly half as much water as the country's biggest lake while covering only about a third of the area.

Which medieval Hanseatic town on Sweden's largest island is ringed by a 3.4 km stone wall?

Visby is sometimes called the City of Roses, and its decline in the late Middle Ages is the reason so many of its stone houses survive in their original style.

Which 190 km Swedish waterway with 58 locks, opened in 1832, do boaters jokingly call the 'divorce ditch'?

The Göta Canal earned the joke from couples struggling through its narrow locks on their own, and its first plans were drawn up by the Scottish engineer Thomas Telford.

Sweden's High Coast, a World Heritage Site, shows the greatest known example of which geological process?

Post-glacial uplift has raised the land there by roughly 285 metres since the ice sheet that had pressed it down melted, and the effect was first recognised on that shore.