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DEMOGRAPHY OF SWEDEN.
10 L
Of the foreign races, which are to a small number represented in
Sweden, the Finns and the Lapps are concentrated in the northernmost
part of the country, or peculiarly in the province of Lappland, belonging
to the lans of Norrbotten and Vesterbotten.
As regards the Lapps, these have dwelt in Lappland from the most ancient
times, and, in smaller numbers, in the län of Jemtland too. It is absolutely
wrong to mark, as the German ethnographical charts nearly always do, the whole
of the inner part of North Sweden as far down as to 62° n. lat., as inhabited
by Lapps. Of the 110,000 inhabitants of the län of Jemtland, the Lapps number
bnt 800, and even in Lappland this people is in such a decided minority that
only a single parish is found there in which the Lapp race forms more than
one-half of the population: this parish is the most northerly one in the whole of
oor country (Enontekis). In Lappland as a whole, the Lapps do not amount to
even one-tenth of the population. — See for the rest the special article on the
Lapps at p. 166.
The 20,000 Finns are found to the greatest part in the län of Norrbotten,
where, especially in the valley of Torneå, they form compact bodies. At present,
a knowledge of the Swedish tongue is spreading to no small degree amongst
these Finns; the greater number of them, however, as yet understand only their
mother-tongue. To the mining-districts of Central Sweden there was, in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, a not unimportant immigration of Finns, who have,
however, at present quite coalesced with the Swedish population. The same state
of things holds good for the colony of Walloons called in, during the seventeenth
century, to the iron-works of Dannemora in Uppland.
Population of different »läns».
From an historical point of view, Sweden is divided into 25
provinces, the names and boundaries of which are indicated on the chart,
p. 4. But from an administrative point of view Sweden is divided
into 25 administrative districts, called län, cf. chart, p. 94. The areas
of the läns and their population at the end of 1751, 1865, 1900 are
given in Table 5, p. 95.
In the main, a Swedish län covers nearly 18,000 sq. km. (the five most
northern läns, in the main, above 52,000; the remainder about 9,000 sq. km.).
The largest län, Norrbotten, covers not less than 106,000 sq. km., i. e. nearly
1« of the entire country, and considerably more space than each of the
countries of Scotland, Ireland, or Portugal. The four northernmost läns,
Norrbotten, Vesterbotten, Vesternorrland, and Jemtland, cover 241,379 sq. km., or
more than 1/i of Sweden, the area of remaining läns amounting collectively
only to 206,483 sq. km.
The most populous län of Sweden is Malmöhus, which contains above
410,000 inhab. Next comes the län of Göteborg och Bohus with nearly 340,000,
and the city of Stockholm with more than 300,000 inhab. Gotland is the only
lån with less than a hundred thousand inhab. (viz. 53,000). Svealand has 1,580,000,
Götaland 2,696,000, and Norrland 860,000 inhab. In Lappland, alone, the
population amounts to 60,000.
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