Norrland is made up of nine provinces: Gästrikland, Hälsingland, Medelpad, Ångermanland, Härjedalen, Jämtland, Västerbotten, Norrbotten and Lappland. It is a land on a vast scale, defined by endless coniferous forest, by the mountain range that runs along the border with Norway, and by broad rivers that flow from the fells down to the coast. In Lappland rises Kebnekaise, Sweden's highest peak, while rivers such as the Lule, Ume, Torne and Ångermanälven are now associated as much with hydropower as with rapids.
Its far-northern position colours everything. In summer the sun never fully sets over the northernmost areas, and the midnight sun shines through the night; in winter comes the polar night, and with it the aurora, painting the sky in green and violet. This is a landscape of long distances, dramatically shifting light and nature that is never far away.
Norrland is also Sápmi, the land of the Sami. The Sami are an indigenous people with their own history, their own languages and a living reindeer husbandry that still shapes much of the interior. High in the mountains, the Laponia area — a living Sami cultural landscape wrapped around the Sarek and Padjelanta national parks and crossed by the long Kungsleden trail — is protected as a World Heritage Site. On the coast, the High Coast (Höga Kusten) stretches across Ångermanland and Medelpad, another World Heritage Site, where the land is still rising out of the sea after the last ice age, faster than almost anywhere else on Earth.
Despite its reputation as wilderness, Norrland is full of life and work. Umeå is the region's largest city and a young university town that was European Capital of Culture in 2014; Sundsvall, Gävle, Luleå and Östersund are regional centres, and at Kiruna iron ore is mined in one of the world's largest underground mines — an operation so vast that the entire town centre is being moved to make room for it. At Jukkasjärvi the famous Icehotel is rebuilt anew every winter.
Norrland's culture is as distinctive as its landscape. In Hälsingland a group of lavishly decorated timber farmhouses — the Hälsingegårdar, painted inside with flowers and fantasy — form yet another World Heritage Site, while in Jämtland the town of Östersund sits beside Storsjön, the lake said to hide a monster of its own, and nearby Åre has grown into Sweden's best-known ski resort. At Christmas the city of Gävle raises a giant straw goat that has become famous mostly for how often it burns down.
Life here has always been shaped by wood and water. The great rivers that once floated timber down to the coast now drive the turbines that light much of the country, and the forest industry still hums in coastal towns such as Sundsvall, rebuilt in stone after a great fire in 1888. Winter turns the region into a playground of skiing, dog-sledding and aurora-watching, while the brief, luminous summer brings cloudberries to the bogs and almost endless daylight.
Norrland has no government of its own and no official symbols either. Since the 1990s, however, an unofficial Norrland flag has come into some popular use as an expression of regional identity; it holds no official status at all, but turns up on everything from house walls to stickers.