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Comment by cpach | Hacker News Reader

This is a big thing for Sweden, especially for the region of Norrland.

I guess one could say that Norrland is like Sweden’s Montana or something like that.

Currently Norrland is receiving lots of business interest and investments. Northvolt is one example. H2 Green Steel is another. For the local population I believe this is very good news. It should give lots of job opportunities that will spill over to other areas such as service jobs.

Some reasons that are often cited why Norrland is a good location is the availability of clean energy from hydropower[0] and that there is also a high level of competence already when it comes to modern manufacturing methods.

[Edit: province → region]

[0] Totally different story in the south of Sweden where nuclear reactors have been decomissioned, and the energy availability seems to become more and more uncertain.

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(Norrland isn't a province. It's one of three regions of Sweden, roughly the two northern thirds of the country by area, containing nine of the twenty-five traditional provinces.)

Good point! I edited my comment.

It may be also relevant that (from Wikipedia) it only has 1.2M /10.3M = 12% of the population of Sweden.

Way more than Montana, which has only .3% of the US population, though Norrland and Montana are similar in absolute numbers.

Area-wise Norrland is roughly 60% of Sweden’s total area[1], while Montana is less than 4% of the US total area. I think that makes the comparison more fair.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Sweden

They are also similar in population density. Norrland has 8.6 people per square mile while Montana has 7 per square mile.

Interesting. I’ve been to Stockholm a few times extended and definitely heard of Lapland, but not Norland.

Lappland is a part of Norrland, but both of these terms are used in a historical sense as cultural/geographical regions, and nowadays replaced by counties

Username checks out. :-)

Lapland is a historical province in Sweden. You'll also find a northernmost part of Finland with the same name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland

One area around three national parts (Padjelanta, Sarek, Stora sjöfallet) is also called Laponia.

But the political division of Sweden around that area - that's Norbottens län, so that's the subdivision that people care most about in their day-to-day life.

Finland was historically a part of Sweden for about 600 years, and the northernmost part was called Lapland. Nowadays that part is split into Swedish Lapland and Finnish Lapland. Norrland (literally "northern land") is the name for the part of Sweden that is north of approximately 61 degrees northern latitude, so it includes Swedish Lapland but also a lot more.

Norr means ”north”. Norrland is the Northern 2/3 of the country. It’s not formally defined but more like the “Midwest” and similar. Lapland is a part of Norrland.

This is further complicated by the fact that Sweden is divided into 21 administrative units (the twenty-five traditional provinces are non-administrative units), in Swedish called "regioner" (formerly "landsting"), where five of these are situated in Norrland.

Green Steel sounds extremely interesting.

If this is succesful, I hope it leads to big changes in other heavy industries.

I fully agree. I’m very excited to follow this development.

Here’s a link with more info in english on the topic:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-23/hydrogen-...

The story when IKEA arrived in Haparanda is one of my favourite ones. The "mayor" (komminfullmäktigeordförande) was seen being very nervous before a meeting with Ingvar Kamprad (founder of IKEA) carrying with him some calculations about geographical customer data.

After the meeting they are both smiling. Some weeks later Ingvar "Haparanda-messiah" Kamprad delivers the news of a new IKEA in Haparanda.

Telga, one of my favorite battery supply companies is up there too. They will be locally mining, refining and coat graphite in the same area.

Its a really cool company, I recommend people check them out.

I believe they’re called Talga (^_^)

Is Province really the correct nomenclature for Norrland? I'd call it a region at best.

Region in English, yes, using the definition from Wikipedia: "In geography, regions are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and the environment (environmental geography)".

Absolutely not "region" in Swedish though, which refers to the 21 administrative units that Sweden is divided into.

I've always found it extremely difficult to translate these concepts between different languages.

Norrland is one of three landsdelar. Wikipedia translates it Lands of Sweden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lands_of_Sweden

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