Scania 760
Gianira Jardin
To the north, Scania borders the former provinces of Halland and Smland, to the northeast Blekinge, to the east and south the Baltic Sea, and to the west resund. Since 2000, a road and railway bridge, the resund Bridge,[4] bridges the Sound and connects Scania with Denmark. Scania forms part of the transnational resund Region.[5]
From north to south Scania is around 130 km; it covers less than 3% of Sweden's total area.[6] The population of over 1,418,000.[7] It represents 13% of the country's population. With 121 inhabitants per square kilometre (310/sq mi) Scania is the second-most densely populated province of Sweden.
The endonym used in Swedish and other North Germanic languages is Skne (formerly spelled Skaane in Danish and Norwegian). The Latinized form Scania is an exonym in English.[3] Sometimes the endonym Skne is used in English text, such as in tourist information,[11] even sometimes as Skane with the diacritic omitted.[12][13] Scania (as also Dalarna) is one of the few Swedish provinces for which exonyms are widely used in many languages, such as French Scanie, Dutch and German Schonen, Polish Skania, Spanish Escania, Italian Scania, etc. For the province's modern administrative counterpart, Skne ln, the endonym Skne is used in English.[14]
In the Alfredian translation of Orosius's and Wulfstan's travel accounts, the Old English form Sconeg appears.[15][16] Frankish sources mention a place called Sconaowe; thelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, wrote about Scani;[17] and in Beowulf's fictional account, the names Scedenige and Scedeland appear as names for what is a Danish land.[15]
The names Scania and Scandinavia are considered to have the same etymology.[18][19][20][21] The southernmost tip of what is today Sweden was called Scania by the Romans and thought to be an island. The actual etymology of the word remains dubious and has long been a matter of debate among scholars. The name is possibly derived from the Germanic root *Skain-awj, which appears in Old Norse as Skney [ˈskɑːnˌœy].[22] According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skaan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing, German Schaden, Swedish skada).[23] Skanr in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem (skan) combined with -r, which means "sandbanks".
The local government reform of 1952 reduced the number of municipalities, and a second subdivision reform, carried out between 1968 and 1974, established today's 33 municipalities[24] (Swedish: kommuner) in Scania. The municipalities have municipal governments, similar to city commissions, and are further divided into parishes (frsamlingar). The parishes are primarily entities of the Church of Sweden, but they also serve as a divisioning measure for the Swedish population registration and other statistical uses.
During the Danish era, the province had no coat of arms. In Sweden, however, every province had been represented by heraldic arms since 1560.[25] When Charles X Gustav of Sweden suddenly died in 1660 a coat of arms had to be created for the newly acquired province, as each province was to be represented by its arms at his royal funeral. After an initiative from Baron Gustaf Bonde, the Lord High Treasurer of Sweden, the coat of arms of the City of Malm was used as a base for the new provincial arms. The Malm coat of arms had been granted in 1437, during the Kalmar Union, by Eric of Pomerania and contains a Pomeranian griffin's head. To distinguish it from the city's coat of arms the tinctures were changed and the official blazon for the provincial arms is, in English: Or, a griffin's head erased gules, crowned azure and armed azure, when it should be armed.
The Scania Griffin has become a well-known symbol for the province and is also used by commercial enterprises. It is, for instance, included in the logotypes of the automotive manufacturer Scania AB and the airline Malm Aviation.
Scania was first mentioned in written texts in the 9th century. It came under Danish king Harald Bluetooth in the middle of the 10th century. It was then a region that included Blekinge and Halland, situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula and formed the eastern part of the kingdom of Denmark. This geographical position made it the focal point of the frequent Dano-Swedish wars for hundreds of years.[citation needed]
By the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, all Danish lands east of resund were ceded to Sweden. First placed under a Governor-General, the province was eventually integrated into the kingdom of Sweden. The last Danish attempt to regain its lost provinces failed after the 1710 Battle of Helsingborg.
In 1719, the province was subdivided in two counties and administered in the same way as the rest of Sweden. In July 1720, a peace treaty between Sweden and Denmark again confirmed the status of Scania as part of Sweden. [27][28]
During Sweden's financial crisis in the early and mid-1990s, Scania, Vstra Gtaland and Norrbotten were among the hardest hit in the country, with high unemployment rates as a result.[31] In response to the crisis, the County Governors were given a task by the government in September 1996 to co-ordinate various measures in the counties to increase economic growth and employment by bringing in regional actors.[31] The first proposal for regional autonomy and a regional parliament had been introduced by the Social Democratic Party's local districts in Scania and Vstra Gtaland already in 1993. When Sweden joined the European Union two years later, the concept "Regions of Europe" came in focus and a more regionalist-friendly approach was adopted in national politics.[32] These factors contributed to the subsequent transformation of Skne County into one of the first "trial regions" in Sweden in 1999, established as the country's first "regional experiment".[32]
The relatively strong regional identity in Scania is often referred to in order to explain the general support in the province for the decentralization efforts introduced by the Swedish government.[33] On the basis of large scale interview investigations about Region Skne in Scania, scholars have found that the prevailing trend among the inhabitants of Scania is to "[look] upon their region with more positive eyes and a firm reliance that it would deliver the goods in terms of increased democracy and constructive results out of economic planning".[34]
Electrified dual track railroad exists from the border with Denmark at the resund Bridge to Malm and onwards to Lund. The latter part is currently being upgraded to four tracks and expected to enter service in 2023.[35] In Lund, the tracks split into two directions.[36] The dual tracks going towards Gothenburg end at Helsingborg,[37] while the other branch continues beyond the provincial border to neighbouring Smland, close to Killeberg.[38][36] This latter dual track continues to mid-Sweden.[36] There are also a few single track railroads connecting cities like Trelleborg, Ystad and Kristianstad.[36] Just as five Scanian stations are served partly (Hssleholm and Osby) or entirely (Ballingslv, Hstveda and Killeberg) by Smland local trains, the Scanian Pgatg trains serve Markaryd in Smland.[39]
There are basically three ticket systems: Sknetrafiken tickets can be purchased for all regional traffic including to Denmark, while the Danish Rejsekort system can only be used at stations served by resundstg and equipped with special card readers. Additionally, Swedish national SJ-tickets are available for longer trips to the north.
The E6 motorway is the main artery through the western part of Scania all the way from Trelleborg to the provincial border towards neighbouring Halland. It continues along the Swedish west coast to Gothenburg and most of the way to the Norwegian border. There are also several other motorways, especially around Malm. Since 2000, the economic focus of the region has changed, with the opening of a road link across the resund Bridge to Denmark.[40]
The narrow lakes with a long north to south extent, which are very common further north, are lacking in Scania. The largest lake, Ivsjn in the north-east, has similarities with the lakes further north, but has a different shape. All other lakes tend to be round, oval or of more complex shape and also lack any specific cardinal direction. Ringsjn, in the middle of the province, is the largest of such lakes.[citation needed]In the winter, some smaller lakes east of Lund often attract young Eurasian sea eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla).[citation needed]
Where the sea meets higher parts of the sloping landscape, cliffs emerge. Such cliffs are white if the soil has a high content of chalk. Good examples of such coastlines exist at the southern side of Ven, between the towns of Helsingborg and Landskrona, and in parts of the south and south-east coasts. In other Swedish provinces, steep coastlines usually reveal primary rock instead.[citation needed]
The gross relief of Scania reflects more the preglacial development than the erosion and deposits caused by the Quaternary glaciers.[46] In Swedish the word s commonly refers to eskers, but major landmarks in Scania, such as Sdersen, are horsts[47] formed by tectonic inversion along the Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone in the late Cretaceous. The Scanian horsts run in a north-west to south-east direction, marking the southwest border of Fennoscandia.[48] Tectonic activity of the Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone during the break-up of Pangaea in the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs led to the formation of hundreds of small volcanoes in central Scania.[49][50] Remnants of the volcanoes are still visible today.[49] Parallel with volcanism a hilly peneplain formed in northeastern Scania due to weathering and erosion of basement rocks.[51][52] The kaolinite formed by this weathering can be observed at Iv Klack.[52] In the Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous a sea level rise led to the complete drowning of Scania. Subsequently, marine sediments buried old surfaces preserving the rocky shores and hilly terrain of the day.[52][53]
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