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Another one of Sweden’s most populated cities, Göteborg, has about 783,000 inhabitants, and another major city of Sweden is Malmö, 515,000 people. Sweden’s population is just right around the area of New Jersey’s. With one of the highest life expectancies the world has, the fertility level of 1.5 children per woman was the lowest for Sweden ever recorded, yet still above average in Europe. The main language spoken in Sweden is Swedish. Swedish is a Germanic language, which has historically been the mother tongue of nearly the entire population, and almost 90 % of native Swedes belong to the Church of Sweden. The Church of Sweden has been the State church for nearly 500 years. The ethnic diversity of the area differs from the surrounding territories. The predominate religion of the area are the Christian Protestants. Sweden has a higher immigration than emigration. But most of the immigrants are Swedish people returning home. Today roughly 18 % of Swedish residents are foreign – born or have at least one non-native parent. Sweden has two minority groups of native inhabitants: the Finnish-speaking people of the northeast, along the Finnish border (about 30,000) and the Sami population of about 17,000. The Sami are scattered throughout the northern Swedish interior and in nearby northerly areas of Norway, Finland and Russia, numbering between 50,000 and 60,000 in all. The location of Sweden is located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in northern Europe. With over 100,000 lakes and 1,680 miles of coastline, this justifies why the Swedish have a passion for boats and summerhouses. With a land area of only 174,000 square miles, it is one of the most sparsely populated countries in Europe. Forest and wood products cover more than half the land, which is a very important resource for the people. In the north, mountains and forests predominate, while in the south is characterized by wooded hills and fertile plains. The North is also known as the Norrland, where, it compromises the northern three-fifths of Sweden and its rolling landscape of hills and mountains, forests, and large river valleys. Along this borderline are big deposits of iron ores. This gives rise to Sweden’s oldest industrial region, Bergslagen. Even further north are the copper, lead and zinc ores. The western border follows the Scandinavian mountain range where its peaks rising 1,000-2,000 meters above sea level. Sweden’s largest rivers originate in these mountains. With only 1,625,000 people in it’s capital, Stockholm is the largest city of the country. Sweden is also one of the world’s oldest democracies, governed by a popularly elected parliament and at the head of the state, a king who has purely ceremonial functions. Sweden is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary form of government based on a one-chamber legislature. A majority of the Swedish Parliament approves of the selection a Prime Minister who forms a Government. (The Swedish Parliament is also known as the Riksdag. Members of this Government head some ten ministries, which come up with policies in their respective fields and supervise a larger number of agencies, which then enforce the laws of the country. When the Government has a proposal they call it a bill. The bill then goes on to The Chamber and is looked at by Party groups and Committees who write reports on the bill which then goes back to The Chamber and then sent back to The Government through documents of notifications. With a PCI of $24, 830, Sweden nowadays has less than three % of Sweden’s labor force works in agriculture and even less than 10 % of the country’s area consists of farmland, yet agriculture is still an important factor of the Swedish economy. The largest amount of agricultural land and the highest productivity are found in the southern parts of Sweden, where specialization in grain and pork production is predominant. With all the natural resources of Sweden agricultural products ranks number one. Of Sweden’s forest land, the national government owns only 5 % (which are mostly located in the northern section of Sweden), forest companies own 37 % (mainly in north central Sweden) and individual owners, mainly farmers, own about 50 %. Fishing used to be a big income for many people, but with new fishing zones redrawn Sweden has lost some of it’s traditional fishing places in the North Sea and are now emphasizing fishing in the Baltic Sea. Mining has still played a large role in Sweden’s economy but has diminished in relative importance since the past. The iron ore fields of Kiruna are at the center of a railroad line from the Baltic steel mill center of Luleå and the ice-free Atlantic export harbor of Narvik, Norway. The timber and wood product industry is located close to its sources of raw material. Sweden’s metal industry still follows a pattern from the days when waterpower and timberland determined the location of iron mills. The iron and steel industry still concentrated in Bergslagen or coastal Oxelösund and Luleå. Even though Sweden has many advantages to its natural resources industry; the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries are still undergoing many strong expansions. Which will then also become another major advantage to the economy of an already stable and strong country. For a long time Danes had been fighting with the Swedes, nearly every time, the Swedes had been winning although the Danes where more prosperous and powerful than the Swedes. This year, a new 9.5-mile, $2 billion tunnel and bridge will connect Sweden with the rest of Europe for the first time in history. When the Oresund Fixed Link, will open its four-lane highway and dual-track railroad it will only be an 11-minute ride from Malmo, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark. Now they have to put aside there past relationships with each other. Even many of Sweden’s people feel that the Danes are more enjoyable persons. Scanians (Swedish people who live in Southern Sweden) are caricatured by other Swedes as provincial lowlanders and they feel neglected by the national Government. They feel even more strongly that the Danes are people to be around. Some even feel more close to Copenhagen than to Stockholm. But the effects of the bridge will be an advantage to both sides I feel things would be able to be transported faster; Sweden can have a faster link with Europe. Although Sweden had many wars with the Danes, they probably had learned many things through the cultures of the Danes. Sweden being one of the lead countries and models for other countries for their high life expectancy, low unemployment, and low birthrate. Bibliography: National Geographic Atlas of the World Revised Sixth Edition, 1995 Swedish Information Service, Internet, www.webcom.com/sis/facts.html Swedish Parliament, Internet, www.riksdagen.se/arbetar/frbeslut/reg1_k_en.htm Geography, Internet, www.si.se/eng/esverige/geograph.html The New York Times, September 5, 1999 Word Count: 1168
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