Northern Sweden

Borders and administrative divisions

Swedish Lapland
Lapland is the colored area on the top map to the right, but the costal zone is usually added and all of northern Sweden is referred to as Lapland. The exact borders, or maybe rather the mental image, of Lapland in Sweden are open to discussion and interpretations. Tourist entrepreneurs outside the official borders could give you a hard time if you insisted that their business is not in Lapland. Slowlife.se naturally is inside the provincial border of Lapland.

Provinces/counties
The provincial division of the country was used during the middle ages when Sweden was a loosely knit kilt of semi-independent kingdoms. Memories from those days are still present in the form of provincial dresses, dialects etc. A recent addition to the identity building and local branding is the revival of provincial dishes, but that is based on flimsy grounds.
In the 1500`s our great nation building king, Gustav Wasa, united the country, and hundred years later the provincial division was changed to counties.

The province of Norrbotten is incorporated in the county of Norrbotten.
The areas included inside the provincial and county boundary-lines have changed more than once during history, but these days the situation is as shown on the maps to the right.
If you would like to find out more about the different provinces and counties in Sweden you could visit Swedensite.

My sphere of interest
This is what I consider my place of work. It roughly coincide with the arctic circle and areas above. As of today, my knowledge of this area is heavily tilted towards Sweden, but little by little I want to expand my destinations to include the whole region. In the future I would also like to consider the Kola peninsula.