Sweden 🇸🇪

Filed under Europe and more precisely Northern Europe, Sweden is a sovereign state. Treaties and official documents call it Kingdom of Sweden. Its seat of government is Stockholm.

The land area is 450,295 km², which ranks it 57th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Papua New Guinea and just ahead of Uzbekistan. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is almost exactly the same size as Morocco.

The population is about 10.6 million, placing it 92nd of 249 by population — between Papua New Guinea above it and Greece below. Among the 16 entries in Northern Europe it ranks 1st by area and 2nd by population.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 62.0° N, 15.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 6,902 km from the equator, in what geographers would call high-latitude latitudes.

Russia and Canada sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 2 neighbours: Finland and Norway. The largest of them by area is Finland, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 11.2 million people.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

Spread across 450,295 km², that works out at about 23 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Swedish, so residents are Swedish.

Swedish is the only official language. It shares that with Finland and the Åland Islands.

Against Europe as a whole it is the 14th most populous of 53 entries, and it accounts for 9.7% of everyone living in Northern Europe.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Sweden ranks 57th of 249 by area and 92nd by population. That works out at 0.30% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.13% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Sweden in the size ordering are Papua New Guinea at 462,840 km² and Uzbekistan at 447,400 km², against Sweden's 450,295 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Sweden averages 23 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 199th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Zoom in from the world to Northern Europe and Sweden sits 2nd of 16 by population and 1st by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is United Kingdom just above and Denmark just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

United Kingdom is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Northern Europe has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
• 🇩🇰 Denmark
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom

The Swedish krona (SEK) is used only in Sweden among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Swedish is listed for 3 entries here, Sweden among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

The currency is the Swedish krona (kr, SEK). It is issued for Sweden alone.

Its internet country code is .se. The international dialling code is +46. In ISO terms it is se in two letters and SWE in three.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Sweden, the answer is Stockholm.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.