1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Swedes (Germanic tribe)
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The Swedes (Swedish, svear, Old Norse, svíar / suar were a North Germanic tribe. The first author who wrote about the tribe is Tacitus, who in his Germania, Jordanes, in the sixth century, mentions Suehans and Sueones. According to early sources such as the sagas, especially Heimskringla, during the Viking Age they constituted the basis of the Varangian subset, the Vikings that travelled eastwards. As the dominions of the Swedish kings grew, the name of the tribe could be applied more generally during the Middle Ages to include also the Geats, later it again meant only the people inhabiting the original tribal lands in Svealand, rather than the Geats. In modern North Germanic languages, the adjectival form svensk and its plural svenskar have replaced the name svear and is, today, used to denote all the citizens of Sweden. Although this distinction is convention in modern Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, Icelandic and their primary dwellings were in eastern Svealand. Their territories also very early included the provinces of Västmanland, Södermanland, the region is still one of the most fertile and densely populated regions of Scandinavia. Their territories were called Svealand - Swede-land, Suithiod - Swede-people, the Æsir-cult centre in Gamla Uppsala, was the religious centre of the Swedes and where the Swedish king served as a priest during the sacrifices. Uppsala was also the centre of the Uppsala öd, the network of estates that financed the Swedish king. The form Suiones appears in the Roman author Tacituss Germania, a closely similar form, Sweon, is found in Old English and in the Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum of Adam of Bremen about the Hamburg-Bremen archbishops who are denoted Sueones. Most scholars agree that Suiones and the attested Germanic forms of the name derive from the same Proto-Indo-European reflexive pronominal root, *se, the word must have meant ones own. In modern Scandinavian, the same appears in words such as svåger. The same root and original meaning is found in the ethnonym of the Germanic tribe Suebi, the details of the phonetic development vary between different proposals. Noréen proposed that Suiones is a Latin rendering of Proto-Germanic *Swihoniz, the form *Swihoniz would in Ulfilas Gothic become *Swaíhans, which later would result in the form Suehans that Jordanes mentioned as the name of the Swedes in Getica. Consequently, the Proto-Norse form would have been *Swehaniz which following the sound-changes in Old Norse resulted in Old West Norse Svíar, *Swe is also the form cited by V. Friesen, who regards the form Sviones as being originally an adjective, Proto-Germanic *Sweoniz, meaning kindred. Then the Gothic form would have been *Swians and the H in Suehans a epenthesis, the Proto-Norse form would then also have been *Sweoniz, which also would have resulted in the historically attested forms. The name became part of a compound, which in Old West Norse was Svíþjóð and he further mentions that the Suiones were much impressed by wealth, and the kings thus was absolute. Further, the Suiones did not normally bear arms, and that the weapons were guarded by a slave, after Tacitus mention of the Suiones, the sources are silent about them until the 6th century as Scandinavia still was in pre-historic times
3.
Post-glacial rebound
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Post-glacial rebound is the rise of land masses that were depressed by the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period, through a process known as isostatic depression. Post-glacial rebound and isostatic depression are different parts of a known as either glacial isostasy, glacial isostatic adjustment. Glacioisostasy is the solid Earth deformation associated with changes in ice mass distribution, the most obvious and direct effects of post-glacial rebound are readily apparent in parts of Northern Eurasia, Northern America, Patagonia, and Antarctica. During the last glacial period, much of northern Europe, Asia, North America, Greenland, the ice was as thick as three kilometres during the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago. The enormous weight of ice caused the surface of the Earths crust to deform and warp downward. Due to the viscosity of the mantle, it will take many thousands of years for the land to reach an equilibrium level. The uplift has taken place in two distinct stages, the initial uplift following deglaciation was almost immediate due to the elastic response of the crust as the ice load was removed. After this elastic phase, uplift proceeded by slow viscous flow so the rate of uplift decreased exponentially after that, today, typical uplift rates are of the order of 1 cm/year or less. In northern Europe, this is shown by the GPS data obtained by the BIFROST GPS network. Studies suggest that rebound will continue for about at least another 10,000 years, the total uplift from the end of deglaciation depends on the local ice load and could be several hundred metres near the centre of rebound. Recently, the term post-glacial rebound is gradually being replaced by the glacial isostatic adjustment. An alternate term that is used is glacial isostasy, because the uplift near the centre of rebound is due to the tendency towards the restoration of isostatic equilibrium. Unfortunately, that gives the wrong impression that isostatic equilibrium is somehow reached, so by appending adjustment at the end. Post-glacial rebound produces measurable effects on vertical motion, global sea levels, horizontal crustal motion, gravity field, Earths rotational motion and state of stress. Studies of glacial rebound give us information about the law of mantle rocks. The former is important to the study of mantle convection, plate tectonics, the latter is important to glaciology, paleoclimate and changes in global sea level. Understanding postglacial rebound is also important to our ability to monitor recent global change, erratic boulders, U-shaped valleys, drumlins, eskers, kettle lakes, bedrock striations are among the common signatures of the Ice Age. In addition, post-glacial rebound has caused significant changes to coastlines and landscapes over the last several thousand years
4.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
5.
Uppland
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Uppland is a historical province or landskap on the eastern coast of Sweden, just north of Stockholm, the capital. It borders Södermanland, Västmanland and Gästrikland and it is also bounded by lake Mälaren and the Baltic sea. It has a short and strangely shaped land border with Åland. The name literally means up land, a name which is encountered in especially older English literature. Its Latinised form, which is used, is Uplandia. The traditional provinces of Sweden serve no administrative or political purposes, the corresponding administrative county, or län, is Uppsala County, which occupies the larger part of the territory. The bulk of the population, however, is within Stockholm County, minor parts of the province are also in Västmanland County, Gävleborg County and Södermanland County. Upplands arms were granted in 1560, distinctive in its depiction of a Globus cruciger, historically, Uppland ranked as a duchy and the coat of arms is represented with a ducal coronet. Blazoned thus, Gules, a Royal Orb Or gemmed of the field, despite the fact that the Uppsala län has a different name and a smaller territory it was granted the same coat of arms in 1940. Uppland was historically divided into chartered cities and districts, within Roslagen they were called skeppslag, and in the rest of the province hundreds. The abovementioned districts and cities have no administrative function today, the provincial population corresponds to the different overlapping counties as follows, Uppland is the birth place of Saint Brigitta of Sweden. The earliest unambiguous mention of the province of Uppland comes from the 1296, the Swedish capital of Stockholm is divided between two provinces. The southern half lies in Södermanland and the half in Uppland. Prince Waldemar Princess Ingiburga, his wife Prince Gustav Prince Sigvard Uppsala is the seat of the archbishop of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. The archaeological site Birka and the castle of Drottningholm are UNESCO World Heritage sites, football in the province is administered by Upplands Fotbollförbund. Uppland - Tourist site Uppland - Tourist information
6.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
7.
Stockholm archipelago
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The Stockholm archipelago is the largest archipelago in Sweden, and the second-largest archipelago in the Baltic Sea. The archipelago extends from Stockholm roughly 60 kilometres to the east, in a north–south direction, it mainly follows the coastline of the Södermanland and Uppland provinces, reaching roughly from Öja island, south of Nynäshamn, to Väddö, north of Norrtälje. It is separated from Åland by a stretch of water named South Kvarken, a separate group of islands lies further north, near the town of Öregrund. Between Arholma and Landsort there are approximately 24,000 islands, some of the better-known islands are Dalarö, Finnhamn, Nässlingen, Grinda, Husarö, Ingarö, Isö, Ljusterö, Möja, Nämdö, Rödlöga, Tynningö, Utö, Svartsö and Värmdö. The biggest towns of the archipelago, apart from Stockholm, are Nynäshamn, Vaxholm, the village of Ytterby, famous among chemists for naming no fewer than four chemical elements, is situated on Resarö in the Stockholm archipelago. The shipping routes from the Baltic to Stockholm pass through the archipelago, there are three main entrances suitable for deep-draught craft, namely, those near Landsort, Sandhamn, and Söderarm. The landscape has been shaped – and is still being shaped – by post-glacial rebound and it was not until the Viking Age that the archipelago began to assume its present-day contours. The islands rise by about three millimeters each year, in 1719 the archipelago had an estimated population of 2,900, consisting mostly of fishermen. Today the archipelago is a holiday destination with some 50,000 holiday cottages. The Stockholm Archipelago Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of the nature and culture of the archipelago, the inhabitants in the archipelago, from around the mid-1400s to the end of the second world war, were combined farmers and fishermen. Today most of the farms on the islands are closed. Many poets, authors and artists have influenced and fascinated by the Stockholm archipelago. Among them are August Strindberg, Ture Nerman, Roland Svensson, Ernst Didring, björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson from the group ABBA wrote most of their songs in a cabin located on the archipelago. Boating is a popular activity with the sailing race Ornö runt being the largest in the archipelago. This annual race, organised by the Tyresö Boat Club, has taken every year since 1973. It is open to anyone with a boat but requires registration. There are different entry classes, with the class being the least competitive. In the winter skaters make excursions over the ice, visiting the larger islands in the archipelago is easy all year round, but during winter period the routes depend on the ice conditions
8.
Baltic Sea
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The Baltic Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, enclosed by Scandinavia, Finland, the Baltic countries, and the North European Plain. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Bay of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga, the sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. The Baltic Sea is connected by waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea Canal. Traffic history Historically, the Kingdom of Denmark collected Sound Dues from ships at the border between the ocean and the land-locked Baltic Sea and they were collected in the Øresund at Kronborg castle near Helsingør, in the Great Belt at Nyborg. In the Little Belt, the site of intake was moved to Fredericia, the narrowest part of Little Belt is the Middelfart Sund near Middelfart. Oceanography Geographers widely agree that the physical border of the Baltic is a line drawn through the southern Danish islands, Drogden-Sill. The Drogden Sill is situated north of Køge Bugt and connects Dragør in the south of Copenhagen to Malmö, it is used by the Øresund Bridge, including the Drogden Tunnel. By this definition, the Danish Straits are part of the entrance, but the Bay of Mecklenburg, another usual border is the line between Falsterbo, Sweden and Stevns Klint, Denmark, as this is the southern border of Øresund. Its also the border between the shallow southern Øresund and notably deeper water, hydrography and biology Drogden Sill sets a limit to Øresund and Darss Sill, and a limit to the Belt Sea. The shallow sills are obstacles to the flow of salt water from the Kattegat into the basins around Bornholm. The Kattegat and the southwestern Baltic Sea are well oxygenated and have a rich biology, the remainder of the Sea is brackish, poor in oxygen and in species. While Tacitus called it Mare Suebicum after the Germanic people called the Suebi, the origin of the latter name is speculative. Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is so named because it stretches through the land as a belt and he might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island mentioned in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Pliny mentions an island named Baltia with reference to accounts of Pytheas and it is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia in On the Ocean by Pytheas. Baltia also might be derived from belt and mean near belt of sea, meanwhile, others have suggested that the name of the island originates from the Proto-Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, fair. This root and its meaning were retained in both Lithuanian and Latvian. On this basis, a related hypothesis holds that the name originated from this Indo-European root via a Baltic language such as Lithuanian, yet another explanation is that the name originally meant enclosed sea, bay as opposed to open sea. Some Swedish historians believe the name derives from the god Balder of Nordic mythology, in the Middle Ages the sea was known by variety of names
9.
Svealand
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Svealand, Swealand or Sweden proper is the historical core region of Sweden. It is located in south central Sweden and is one of three lands of Sweden, bounded to the north by Norrland and to the south by Götaland, deep forests, Tiveden, Tylöskog, and Kolmården, separated Svealand from Götaland. Historically, its inhabitants were called Svear, from which is derived the English Swedes, Svealand consists of the capital region Mälardalen in the east, Roslagen in the north-east, the former mining district Bergslagen in the center, and Dalarna and Värmland in the west. The older name of Sweden in Swedish, Svea rike or the Realm of the Swedes, Swea Region, other forms are Sweoðeod, and Sweorice. As the domains of the Swedish kings grew, the name Svealand began to be used to separate the territory from the new. Since 1634, Sweden has been divided into counties instead of provinces, Svealand was the original Sweden, to which it gave its name. This is supported by linguistics and is based on medieval sources. In Old Norse and in Old English, Svealand and Sweden are synonymous, in Sögubrot af Nokkrum for instance, Kolmården between Svealand and Östergötland is described as the border between Sweden and Östergötland. In Hervarar saga, king Ingold I rides to Sweden through Östergötland, hann reið austr um Smáland ok í eystra Gautland ok svá í Svíþjóð. Sweoland is mentioned in the travels of Ohthere of Hålogaland around 890, the lord Bo Jonsson Grip was probably the one who was best acquainted with the geography of the Swedish kingdom since he owned more than half of it. In 1384, he stated in his will that the kingdom consisted of Swerige, the 15th-century Swedish version of the Þiðrekssaga says that Vilkinaland was formerly a name for Sweden and Götaland, wilcina land som nw är kalladh swerige oc götaland. A campaign to the east started by the kings of Svealand during the 12th century eventually conquered the provinces of Österland, an older name for Finland. In the early Middle Ages the modern province of Gästrikland was part of Tiundaland, for a time in the early 19th century, the province of Värmland belonged to the Court of Appeal for Svealand. Even though Värmland historically belonged to Götaland, it has by custom long been considered part of Svealand, Norrland Götaland Österland Rike Media related to Svealand at Wikimedia Commons
