Norrland

• 1. Introduction

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  Norrland, whose name originally meant 'the Northlands', makes up roughly 60 percent of Sweden's entire landmass, yet holds only about 12 percent of its people. That imbalance alone raises a question: how does a place so vast stay so empty? And what fills the space instead?

  The region stretches from the forests of Gästrikland in the south all the way to Lappland in the far north, where Sweden's tallest mountain, Kebnekaise, rises to 2,097 metres. Its nine historical provinces span climates ranging from humid coastal conditions to tundra above the tree line. It produced hockey legends and horror films, supplied Sweden's electricity, and was once compared to colonial India by one of Sweden's most powerful statesmen.

  This documentary follows Norrland through its geography, its contested history, its athletic triumphs, and the stories outsiders have told about it, stories that reveal as much about Sweden's south as they do about the north.

• 2. A Land of Three Belts

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  Kebnekaise, standing at 2,097 metres in Lappland, anchors the westernmost of Norrland's three north-south geographic belts. The Scandinavian Mountains run along that western edge, giving way to the Muddus Plains across much of the inland, and then to a mixed coastal relief in the east. Nearly all low-lying areas sit below the tree line, which is why boreal forest dominates the interior.

  Long rivers descend from those mountains toward the sea, and coastal towns grew up at their mouths. The drop in elevation across those river courses makes Norrland the primary source of hydroelectric power in Sweden. In a country where hydroelectricity accounts for approximately 40 percent of total electricity production, that contribution is far from marginal.

  Sweden's deepest lake, Hornavan, also lies within Norrland's borders. Most major rivers have been exploited for water power, with only four exceptions. Beneath the ground, mines for precious metals have operated across the region as well, reinforcing the picture of a landscape defined by what it yields.

• 3. Borders That Shifted

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  The name Norrland can be traced at least as far back as 1433, when Karl's Chronicle records that Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson sent a letter to Erik Puke asking for help to conquer 'al norland'. That earliest documented reference already treats the north as a single entity worth controlling.

  For much of its early history, Norrland's boundaries were genuinely unstable. Jämtland and Härjedalen belonged to Norway until 1645, which is why they are sometimes treated as outside the historical Norrland proper. At the same time, when Finland was part of Sweden, Norrland extended into northern Finland; the region's eastern border ran at the rivers Kaakamojoki and later Simojoki. When Sweden lost Finland to Russia in 1809, a new border was drawn at the Torne River, cutting off that eastern reach permanently.

  The southern boundary shifted too. Gästrikland was originally part of Uppland until the 14th or 15th century, and was only folded into Norrland from the mid-17th century onward. Up to the Middle Ages, the far north, meaning Norrbotten and Lappland, was inhabited by Sami, Kvens, and peoples related to the Finns. Swedish and Norwegian settlers in the south lived alongside the Sami. From the Middle Ages forward, Swedish kings pursued a policy of colonization and Christianization across the whole area.

• 4. Colony Within the Kingdom

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  A quote attributed to Axel Oxenstierna captures the attitude Stockholm long held toward the north: "In Norrland we have an India within our borders, if only we realize we should be taking advantage of it." The original Swedish reads: "I Norrland hava vi inom våra gränser ett Indien, blott vi förstå att bruka det."

  The industrial era made that colonial logic concrete. When the Industrial Revolution reached Sweden in the mid-19th century, Norrland became the source for the country's wood and pulp industry. Resources flowed south. In the official history of Sweden, coverage of the northern parts of the country has historically been thin.

  Toward the end of the 20th century, the population of Norrland actually grew noticeably, driven largely by people moving there from larger cities. Yet the region's largest city, Umeå, shares the list of county seats with Gävle, Härnösand, Östersund, and Luleå, none of which approach the scale of Stockholm, Gothenburg, or Malmö. Sundsvall, Skellefteå, and Örnsköldsvik are the largest non-capital cities, and Kiruna stands as the main town of the vast Lappland province. With the exception of Östersund, all major Norrland cities sit near the coast.

• 5. Ice, Snow, and Skis

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  Peter Forsberg, Börje Salming, Markus Näslund, Henrik Lundqvist, Nicklas Bäckström, Elias Pettersson, and the twin brothers Henrik and Daniel Sedin all share one biographical detail: they are natives of Norrland. Ice hockey is generally regarded as the most popular spectator sport in the region, and those names represent a striking concentration of Swedish hockey greatness from a single geographic area.

  As of the 2023-24 season, four Norrland clubs compete in the Swedish Hockey League: Luleå HF, Skellefteå AIK, MoDo Hockey, and Timrå IK. Brynäs IF and IF Björklöven, with their long traditions in Swedish hockey, currently play in Hockeyallsvenskan, the second tier.

  Skiing, both alpine and Nordic, thrives in a region whose mountains and subarctic winters make the sport almost unavoidable. Two of Sweden's largest ski resorts, Åre and Hemavan, are in Norrland. Ingemar Stenmark, Anja Pärson, and Per Elofsson are among the skiers who came out of the region. Football has also been popular, but Norrland clubs have not matched the southern city teams; no Norrland club has ever won Allsvenskan, Sweden's top football league, and Sandvikens IF remains the only side from the region ever to finish in the top four, last doing so in 1956.

• 6. Othered in Fiction

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  Swedish fiction has long treated Norrland as a place apart. The thriller films The Hunters and its sequel False Trail cast the region as a landscape of racial prejudice and violence. Films like Sällskapsresan 2 - Snowroller and Pistvakt - En vintersaga engage with the mutual suspicion between Norrland and Stockholm. People from Norrland, for their part, have a term for Stockholm: fjollträsk, which translates loosely as 'sissy swamp.'

  Despite Norrland being the most linguistically and culturally diverse of Sweden's three traditional lands, fiction tends to portray it as a single homogeneous wilderness and its people as villagers, even though the majority of the population lives in and around coastal cities.

  The 2006 horror film Frostbite takes a different approach. Shot in Kalix and Kiruna, it presents a larger northern community whose people are warm to outsiders. The hostility in that film belongs to the nature, not the residents: a permanent darkness over the town, extreme cold, and vampires drawn to the arctic night. The film became notable partly for the fact that its actors, including those who are actually from Norrland, speak without the regional accent.

  As It Is in Heaven, released in 2004, offers a more complicated portrait. Its northern town is initially hostile to the main character as a boy, and he leaves to escape bullying. Returning years later as a musician, he finds the insularity has not lifted. Stieg Larsson's 2005 thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo places a central portion of its plot in the fictional coastal town of Hedestad, set just over an hour north of Gävle. Larsson returns repeatedly to the social distance between Stockholm and Norrland: a Stockholmer posted there feels 'exiled to the back of beyond,' while Norrlanders speaking regional dialects are treated as nearly incomprehensible. The book's translation into numerous languages brought Norrland's distinct character to readers far outside Sweden.