This week in #geoweirdness we head back to northern Europe to look at the geographic oddities of Sweden
1/n
2/ Sweden is part of Scandinavia a geographic/cultural grouping that also includes Norway
and Denmark
. But some people also use the term to include Finland
(or at least the Finnish territory of the Åland Islands
) Iceland
, and the Faroe Islands
. This larger grouping is generally referred to as the "Nordics" which also includes Greenland
. It's complicated
3/ Sweden is a member of the European Union (EU)
but doesn't use the Euro
. Nevertheless some border municipalities have in-officially declared the Euro to be valid.
A recent poll for the first time showed a majority of the country in favor of adopting the Euro.
4/ A very new Swedish geopolitical development is that the nation will soon be joining NATO - just as neighboring Finland
recently did, thus ending a long tradition of military neutrality
5/ Sweden wasn't always neutral though - the Swedish Empire was a major force in the 30 Years War (1618-1648) and had territories all around northern Europe.
6/ One odd historical footnote of Sweden's territorial expansion is that the German
coastal city of Wismar was legally part of Sweden until 1903 (though leased to Mecklenburg-Schwerin).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wismar#Under_Swedish_rule
For German speakers here's an interesting podcast about the situation:
https://www.deutschlandfunknova.de/beitrag/schwedenherrschaft-in-wismar-1803-der-pfandvertrag-von-malmoe
7/ For a brief period Sweden also had a colony in the New World in what is today the US
states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. In 1655 it was captured by the Dutch
, and then ten years later taken over by the British
along with the rest of New Netherlands
@opencage
Clearly, there ought to be a state called New Sweden made up of the greater Philly metro area, South New Jersey, and the Delmarva peninsula.