Greece vs Sweden

Sweden is 3.4 times larger than Greece — 450,295 against 131,957 km². Sweden is slightly more populous, by 1.8% — 10,596,620 against 10,413,962 people.

Side by side

Population density

Greece is 3.4 times more densely populated than Sweden — 79 against 24 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Euro and the Swedish krona.

Greece

Somewhere between 1,200 and 6,000 islands depending on how you count a rock, of which about 227 are inhabited. Greece has roughly 13,700 km of coastline, the longest in the Mediterranean and eleventh longest in the world. No part of the mainland is more than about 137 km from the sea, and Mount Olympus reaches 2,917 m.

Sweden

Sweden has roughly 267,000 islands, more than any other country, though only a small fraction are inhabited. Around seventy percent of it is forest, and a seventh lies above the Arctic Circle. Its right of public access lets anyone walk and camp on most uncultivated land.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.