LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Sweden: Southern Sweden
built 605 days ago
Sweden is a highly industrialized country and has one of the highest living standards in the world. Since 1940 there has been a great movement of workers from farms to cities; ... agricultural output has increased considerably with the application of scientific farming methods. In the 1990s manufacturing contributed about 20% of the annual national income and agriculture about 2%. Transportation, communication, and trade are also important. Farming is concentrated in the southern part of the country; the leading commodities produced are dairy products, grain (including fodder crops), sugar beets, and potatoes. Large numbers of poultry, hogs, and cattle are raised.
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Early modern "Sweden" was not what one sees today on a map. In 1500, the southern provinces of Skåne, Blekinge, and Halland belonged to Denmark, and the border areas of Bohuslän, Jämtland, and Härjedalen were parts of Norway. (Norway gradually lost its status as an independent state in the fifteenth century, and from the mid-1530s was, in all but name, a territory of Denmark.) Northern Sweden was sparsely settled and loosely controlled. Finland, smaller than it is today, was an integral part of the country. The borders of current Sweden date mostly from 1658/60 and 1809. In addition, Sweden, in a broad sense, included a Baltic empire that was built and then lost in this period.
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Sweden has three main regions. Norrland, covering about three-fifths of the country, is mountainous, densely forested, has large ore deposits and contains the majority of the country's 90,000 lakes. Svealand consists of the Central Swedish lowland with its vast lakes and archipelagos and the hilly, forested inland regions of Dalarna and Värmland. Götaland in the south comprises the stony Småland highlands and the rich plains of Skåne, Västergötland and Östergötland. About 15% of Sweden lies north of the Arctic Circle. Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, with increasing forest coverage northward.
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Sweden has a population of 8.8 million, with about 85% living in the southern half of the country. Around 90% belong to the Church of Sweden, which is Lutheran. Swedish is a Germanic language.
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Starting in the 2nd century CE, much of southern Sweden's agricultural land was parcelled up with low stone walls. They divided the land into permanent infields and meadows for winter fodder on one side of the wall, and wooded outland where the cattle was grazed on the other side. This principle of landscape organisation survived into the 19th century. The Roman Period ... saw the first large-scale expansion of agricultural settlement up the Baltic coast of the country's northern two thirds.
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Although Sweden is a fairly large country, most of the action takes place in the southern parts where the distances are not huge. Domestic flights are mainly for travellers with little time or much money... if you are heading for the far north you may want to consider it.
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Southern Sweden