Sweden occupies most of the Scandinavian Peninsula and precisely the compact eastern section, widely facing the Baltic Sea; it has a significant development in the sense of the meridians, going from 55 ° to 69 ° N latitude, so as to incorporate a vast stretch of Lapland to the N, thus participating in the Arctic world, while to the S it now extends towards continental Europe, temperate. The territory also shows, in broad terms, a certain uniformity. It consists of very ancient geological structures being an integral part of the Baltic shield, the archaeozoic plate which represents the oldest section of the European continent and which often crops out here in vast stretches with its Precambrian rocks of gneiss, granites, crystalline schists. In the western belt, however, along the border with Norway, the territory encompasses the eastern side of the so-called Scandinavian Alps, a long chain formed in the Paleozoic as a result of the Caledonian orogeny. The Precambrian base sinks under more recent sediments (Upper Paleozoic and Mesozoic) in correspondence with the southern cusp of the country, where, geologically, continental Europe can be started; these areas, although of limited surface as the ancient soils occupy approx. 80% of the territory are very important because they often correspond to very fertile agricultural districts. Long flattened by erosion, the mountains underwent a rise in the Cenozoic which did not lead to new corrugations but only to a rejuvenation of the region; the powerful glaciation of the Quaternary was superimposed on the forms thus constituted, present here in all its phases, but of which it was the most recent to leave the decisive mark on the landscape. The coverage of glacial deposits is in fact almost continuous; in large areas these soils rest directly on the archaeozoic base (a very rare fact, outside Scandinavia) and, where the basement surfaces, the two stratigraphic extremes thus appear side by side. Visit healthinclude.com for Sweden travel information.
Vast areas were depressed by the weight of the ice – sometimes several thousand meters thick – below sea level; it is true that this was lower than the current one as a significant amount of water was believed to be in the form of ice. Agricultural land in southern Sweden is essentially located on deposits that were submerged at the time of the ice retreat, which cover large regions in central Sweden and the southern coastal strip. The glaciation had a very important erosive action (excavation of the valleys, rounding of the rock masses, etc.) and, when the glaciers retreated, a no less significant sedimentation activity. Among the various manifestations of glacial deposit, the most characteristic are the ôs (sometimes confused with eskers), actually present in the entire Scandinavian area. In the form of raised cordons sometimes a few tens of meters, a few meters wide and up to over a hundred kilometers long, they are, according to most geologists, species of delta deposits that formed at the mouth of subglacial streams at the edge of the glaciers and that gradually lengthened with the progressive retreat of the glaciers themselves. In addition to bumpy the landscape, glacial deposits originated rapids and cascades in rivers and generally created obstacles to drainage, which led to the formation of thousands of lakes, some of which are among the largest in Europe, mostly from the typical elongated and branched shape. In the successive and alternating phases of the glaciations there was a series of isostatic rises and falls which, with the consequent phenomena of withdrawal and ingression of the sea, determined the coastal morphology: the Gulf of Bothnia itself originated from the marine transgression, and thus in general the dense fragmentation of islets, particularly numerous at the height of the Gulf of Stockholm (at Sweden, however, also includes the two large islands of Öland, 1344 km², and Gotland, 3001 km²). The decrease in pressure caused by the definitive retreat of the ice caused a lifting of the lands, which continues today, more marked in northern Sweden (it is 100 cm per century in Västerbotten), less, but still very marked, in the central south (40 cm per century in the Stockholm area).
Historically three main regions are distinguished in Sweden, a division that largely relies on geomorphological reasons: Norrland, or land of the North, Svealand, or land of the Svioni, Götaland, or land of the Gauti. The Norrland it is a very large area – roughly equal to 2/3 of the country – with a rigid climate and very sparsely populated, especially the northern part, corresponding to the Swedish section of Lapland; it is a region of high lands, which gradually declines from the western raised edge towards the Gulf of Bothnia. On the border with Norway rise the highest peaks of the country; they are reliefs with often flattened tops (fjäll), almost devoid of vegetation, with perennial snow plates, but whose slopes are thickly engraved by deep glacial furrows, hosting myriads of lakes. Long eroded, the peaks rarely exceed 2000m (Kebnekaise, 2117m; Sarektjåkkå, 2090m); with a series of parallel ridges the reliefs turn towards the E, forming a vast plateau in correspondence with eastern Norrland, 450 m high on average, which a low alluvial belt borders along the sea. the Svealand, corresponding to central Sweden (or rather central-southern), is mostly flat. Vast depressionary area, after the last glaciation it was entirely covered by the waters, which united the Baltic to the current region of the straits and of which there are striking testimonies in the large lake basins that today occupy it. A real key region of Sweden, Svealand is also home to the country’s two major cities, located at the ends of the depression: Stockholm to the E and Gothenburg to W. Finally, in Götaland, corresponding to southern Sweden, the Småland, a plateau archaeozoic of modest elevation (377 m in Mount Tomtabacken), however sufficient not to be submerged by the postglacial seas, and the Scania, southern cusp of the entire Scandinavian Peninsula. Also an area, like Svealand, of plains barely moved by gentle undulations, the Scania is projected towards the area of Denmark, from which it is separated by the Øresund (Öresund) strait.
