Sweden is longer than you think

Start at Smygehuk, a low headland on the coast of Skåne. Nothing on the Swedish mainland is further south.

Now head north, and keep going.

The line ends at Treriksröset, a stone marker standing in a lake where Sweden, Norway and Finland meet. That is about 1,570 kilometres as the crow flies.

A distance that big is hard to feel, so try this. Pin Sweden at its southern tip and swing it around.

The top lands south of Rome. Sweden on its own reaches from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.

All that length is split into 21 counties, called län. They are nowhere near the same size.

The biggest by far is Norrbotten, at the very top. It covers almost a quarter of the country on its own.

The Arctic Circle cuts straight across it.

Kiruna is Norrbotten’s mining town. Its iron ore mine, Kiirunavaara, has gone so deep that the ground under the old town is giving way.

So the town is moving. Its centre is being rebuilt about three kilometres east, one building at a time.

In August 2025 even the church went. Kiruna Church, 672 tonnes of red wood from 1912, rolled five kilometres on trailers over two days to its new spot.

Back south, the land breaks into lakes. Vänern is the largest lake in the European Union.

Its neighbour Vättern is the second largest in Sweden, long and thin like a scar.

Out in the Baltic sits Gotland, Sweden’s biggest island. Its main town, Visby, still has most of its medieval wall.

And then Stockholm, spread over islands where Lake Mälaren meets the sea. The county around it holds nearly a quarter of everyone in Sweden.