Sweden

Sweden is the country of the European taiga: more than half its surface is conifer forest, dotted with almost a hundred thousand lakes and extensive peatlands. The north, Swedish Lapland, is a landscape of bare mountains, wild rivers and tundra where the Sami people keep up the transhumant herding of reindeer and where the four great Scandinavian carnivores live: brown bear, wolf, lynx and wolverine. The south, milder and more agricultural, keeps mixed oak and beech woods, and in Scania central European species absent from the rest of the country appear. The Stockholm archipelago and the islands of Gotland and Öland add coastal environments with grey seals, seabirds and limestone grasslands full of orchids. The right of public access, the allemansrätten, allows walking, camping and foraging on almost any ground, and has shaped an everyday relationship with nature uncommon in Europe.