Sweden occupies the eastern side of the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe, bordered by Norway to the west, Finland to the northeast, and the Gulf of Bothnia and Baltic Sea along a 3,572 km coastline to the east and south. At 450,295 km² it is the largest country in Northern Europe and the fifth largest in Europe. Its main physical regions run in bands from north to south: the Scandinavian Mountains along the Norwegian border, the forested hills and river valleys of Norrland, the lake-filled Central Swedish lowland between Gothenburg and Stockholm, the South Swedish highlands of Småland, and the plains of Scania, with the limestone islands of Gotland and Öland offshore. The highest point is Kebnekaise at about 2,097 m in Lapland; the lowest is 2.41 m below sea level at Kristianstad in Scania. Its longest river system is the Klarälven–Göta älv, feeding and draining Vänern, the largest lake in the European Union, and the country holds about 95,700 lakes in all. The easiest way to see how it fits together is to start at the top and walk downhill.
Kebnekaise, 2,097 m: A Summit That Keeps Changing
Kebnekaise, from the Sami for "cauldron crest", stands in Swedish Lapland about 150 km north of the Arctic Circle and west of the mining town of Kiruna. The massif has two main peaks. For most of the last century the higher was the southern one, a dome of glacier ice once measured at 2,120 m. That ice has shrunk by about 24 m in 50 years, and the ice-free northern peak, 2,096.8 m, is now the highest fixed point in Sweden. Because the south summit's height varies with each summer's melt, the "highest mountain" figure has had to be updated several times.
The massif sits between three glacial valleys, Láddjuvággi, Čeakčavággi and Visttasvággi, and is heavily glaciated. Storglaciären flows east into the Tarfala valley, home to a glacier research station. A 100 m borehole drilled into bedrock there at 1,540 m found a year-round rock temperature of −2.75 °C, pointing to permafrost roughly 330 m thick. The Kungsleden hiking trail passes the foot of the mountain on its way between Abisko and Hemavan.
Sarek and the Other 2,000-Metre Peaks of Lapland
Sweden has 13 peaks above 2,000 m, all in the far northwest. Six of them are inside Sarek National Park in Jokkmokk Municipality, established in 1909 as one of the oldest national parks in Europe. The park is roughly circular, about 50 km across, and contains around 200 mountains over 1,800 m and about 100 glaciers. Its highest summit is Sarektjåkkå at 2,089 m, the second-highest mountain in Sweden. Sarek has no marked trails and only a couple of bridges, and it receives some of the heaviest rainfall in the country.
The park's best-known view is Rapadalen, the valley of the Rapa River, seen from the summit of Skierfe. Glacial meltwater loaded with sediment spreads into a braided delta. Sarek adjoins Stora Sjöfallet and Padjelanta national parks, and together they form part of the Laponian Area World Heritage Site. Here the names on the map are Sami: tjåkkå for mountain, vagge for valley, jåkkå for stream and ätno for river.
Torneträsk, the Torne and the Lule: Rivers Falling to the Gulf of Bothnia
Below the peaks, water sets the pattern. Almost every large river in northern Sweden starts near the Norwegian border and runs southeast, in roughly parallel valleys, to the Gulf of Bothnia. The northernmost starts in Torneträsk, a 70 km long glacial lake of 330 km² in Kiruna Municipality, near the Norwegian border. Carved by ice to a depth of 168 m, it is the second-deepest lake in Sweden and is usually frozen from December to June. The Torne River leaves its eastern end and flows 522 km to the Gulf of Bothnia; for about half its length, with its tributary the Muonio, it forms the border with Finland.
Next south is the Lule River, 460 km long and the largest river in Norrbotten by flow. Its water is dammed for power: the Akkajaure reservoir, holding more than 6 km³, is Sweden's largest man-made lake, and the Harsprånget station, just downstream of Porjus, is the country's biggest hydroelectric plant. The dams cut the flow over Stora Sjöfallet, once one of Sweden's most famous waterfalls, with a drop of 39.6 m. Farther south the pattern repeats with the Kalix, the Ume and the Ångerman, until the Dalälven, over 520 km long, which is often treated as the southern edge of Norrland.
That northern region, Norrland, covers almost 60 percent of the country. Its terrain, the so-called Norrland terrain, is mostly hilly and mountainous, and it is covered by the continuous boreal forest of pine and spruce that helps make Sweden about 69 percent forest and woodland overall. Soils are thin till and peat. Kiruna Municipality alone has the area of Scania, Blekinge and Halland combined, but only about 25,000 people.
The High Coast: Land Still Rising From the Sea
Where Norrland meets the Gulf of Bothnia in Ångermanland, between Härnösand and Örnsköldsvik, the coast suddenly becomes steep. This is the High Coast, or Höga Kusten. During the ice ages the Fennoscandian ice sheet pressed the land down under its weight; when the ice left this area roughly 9,600 years ago, the crust began to rebound. The uplift here totals about 285 m, the highest known isostatic rebound on Earth, and the land is still rising by about 8 mm a year. Old shorelines now sit high on the hillsides, and cliffs that were once at sea level form the tall headlands that give the coast its name.
The process was first recognised and studied here, and in 2000 UNESCO listed the High Coast as a World Heritage Site; in 2006 it was joined with Finland's Kvarken Archipelago across the gulf.
Vänern, Vättern and Mälaren: The Lake Belt of the Central Lowland
South of the Dalälven the ground drops into the Central Swedish lowland, a broad east–west belt from Gothenburg to Stockholm. Its fertile soils made it the historic heartland of the country, and Sweden's four largest lakes, Vänern, Vättern, Mälaren and Hjälmaren, all lie within it.
Vänern covers 5,655 km², making it the largest lake in the European Union and the third largest in Europe after Ladoga and Onega. Its surface lies 44 m above sea level, yet its deepest point, 106 m down, is 62 m below sea level. The main inflow is the Klarälven, which enters near Karlstad after a detour through Norway’s Lake Femunden; the outflow is the Göta älv, which runs 93 km past Trollhättan to the Kattegat at Gothenburg. Treated as one river, the Klarälven–Göta älv is the longest river in the Nordic countries. Vänern's western shore follows a fault scarp, while its shallow southeast was scoured out of soft sedimentary rock by glaciers.
Vättern, to the southeast, is long and finger-shaped, 1,912 km² in area but 128 m deep at its deepest point south of the island of Visingsö. It drains east through the Motala ström to the Baltic, and since 1832 the Göta Canal has linked it with Vänern, creating a waterway across the country. Mälaren, the third largest at 1,140 km², is shallow and island-studded, reaching only 64 m in depth. It meets the Baltic in central Stockholm, where the city is built on the islands between lake and sea.
Tomtabacken, Scania and the Floor at −2.41 m
South of the lakes the land rises again into the South Swedish highlands, the forested uplands of Småland. They resemble the Norrland terrain but without its deep valleys. The top is Tomtabacken, 377 m, a flat-topped hill about 22 km southwest of Nässjö with a lookout tower over the forest. It is the highest point in Småland and in Götaland, the southern of Sweden’s three traditional lands, and it is cold for its latitude: its mean July temperature of about 14 °C is similar to Jokkmokk on the Arctic Circle. Thin, stony soils made farming difficult here, so small industries grew in importance instead. Sweden's national heat record, 38 °C, was set in Småland at Målilla in June 1947, a mark shared with Ultuna in Uppland.
The final descent leads into Scania, at the southern tip. Here a chain of long, narrow ridges, including Hallandsåsen, Söderåsen and Romeleåsen, runs northwest to southeast; they are horsts, blocks raised along the Tornquist Zone fault line. Between them lie the richest farmlands in the country. The plains of Scania and Halland make up about 10 percent of Sweden's cultivated land, with yields closer to those of continental Europe, and southern Sweden has the greatest variety of plants and animals in the country.
Offshore in the Baltic, Gotland and Öland, the two largest islands, are made of limestone and marl, unlike most of the mainland, and covered in alvar vegetation suited to lime-rich soil. They have landforms found almost nowhere else in Sweden: active sea cliffs, caves and the sea stacks called rauks.
The country's lowest point is on the mainland, inside the Kristianstad Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve in the city of Kristianstad in northeast Scania, where the Helge River meets Lake Hammarsjön. At 2.41 m below sea level, it lies on the bed of Nosabyviken, a bay of Lake Hammarsjön that engineer John Nun Milner drained in the 1860s to create farmland. From Kebnekaise's ice-free summit to that drained bay, Sweden spans just under 2,100 m of relief. For how that range shapes the weather, read our guide to the climate of Sweden; for the city at the lake belt's eastern end, see Stockholm, the capital; and to compare its size with its western neighbour, find out whether Sweden is bigger than Norway.