Sweden

Sweden runs the length of the eastern Scandinavian Peninsula, from the farmland of Skåne to Lapland, well north of the Arctic Circle. Ice sheets left a country of forest and water: conifers cover much of it, and lakes, the largest being Vänern, number in the tens of thousands. The Scandinavian Mountains follow the Norwegian border up to Kebnekaise, and the Baltic coast breaks into archipelagos of granite islands. In the far north, winter days are dim and short, and summer nights never grow dark.

Swedish Vikings travelled down the rivers of Russia as far as Constantinople. The kingdom took shape in the Middle Ages, joined Denmark and Norway in the Kalmar Union, and broke away under Gustav Vasa in 1523. In the seventeenth century Sweden was a great power around the Baltic, until defeat by Russia at Poltava in 1709; Finland was lost in 1809. Its last war ended in 1814, and it stayed neutral in both world wars.

Swedes value consensus, equality and lagom, roughly ‘just the right amount’. Allemansrätten, the right of public access, lets anyone walk, camp or pick berries on most land. Midsummer dancing round a maypole and candlelit Lucia processions in midwinter mark the year. Alfred Nobel endowed the prizes, most of them presented in Stockholm, and Astrid Lindgren and ABBA carried Swedish culture abroad. Iron ore from Kiruna, timber and paper from the northern forests, and engineering firms such as Volvo and Ericsson built the economy.