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Scandinavian Peninsula

Adapted from Wikipedia · Explorer experience

A stunning winter view of Scandinavia from space, showing snowy landscapes, deep fjords, and frozen lakes.

The Scandinavian Peninsula

The Scandinavian Peninsula is a big land area in Northern Europe. It has the main parts of Sweden and Norway, and a little bit of Finland. It is the largest peninsula in all of Europe!

People often call the area around Denmark, Norway, and Sweden "Scandinavia." The name comes from a place called Scania, which is now in Sweden but used to belong to Denmark.

The Scandinavian Peninsula has tall mountains and big glaciers. The highest point is Galdhøpiggen in Norway. Many people live in the south, in cities like Stockholm and Oslo.

The land there has lots of trees, minerals, and places to grow food. The Scandinavian mountain range runs between Norway and Sweden, making the landscape very beautiful.

Images

A map showing the geographic region of Fennoscandia in northern Europe.
Historical map showing Sweden and Norway from the year 1890.
Scandinavia from space in winter. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite captured the above image of the Scandinavian Peninsula on February 19, 2003. With a landscape largely shaped by glaciers over the last ice age, the Scandinavian Peninsula is as picturesque in the winter as it is cold. Along the left side of the peninsula, one can see the jagged inlets, known as fjords, lining Norway’s coast. Many of these fjords are well over 2,000 feet (610 meters) deep and were carved out by extremely heavy, thick glaciers that formed during the last ice age. The glaciers ran off the mountains and scoured troughs into Norway’s coastline with depths that reached well below sea level. When the glaciers melted, the seawater rushed into these deep troughs to form the fjords. The deepest fjord on Norway’s coast, known as Sogn Fjord, lies in southwest Norway and is 4,291 feet (1,308 m) deep. Glaciers also carved the mountains in Norway and northernmost Sweden. South of this mountainous region, however, Sweden consists mostly of flat, heavily forested land dotted with lakes. Lake Vänern and Lake Vättern, the largest of Sweden’s lakes, do not freeze completely during the winter months and can be seen clearly at the bottom of the peninsula. Lake Vättern, the smaller of the two lakes, was connected to the Baltic Sea during the last ice age. After the ice melted, a tremendous weight was lifted off of the peninsula, and the landmass rose up to separate the lake from the Baltic Sea. To the northeast of the peninsula lies Finland with more than 55,000 lakes, most of which were also created by glacial deposits.

Related articles

Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Northern Europe
Finland
Europe

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Scandinavian Peninsula, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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