ABSTRACT
Skåne, the southernmost province of Sweden, is separated from the Danish island of Zealand by a narrow strait of water, the Öresund. It is approximately square in shape and bounded by the sea on three sides. Skåne is the bread basket of Sweden. It comprises barely 3 per cent of the total land area, yet accounts for over 17 per cent of the total arable land in the country. It has now, and in the historical past, the greatest concentration of rural settlement. The population is about one million people today out of a total for the whole of Sweden of around eight million.
