ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
The Scandinavian countries have low levels of population density because vast tracts in the frozen north are empty, but that doesn't mean the people are spread out.
Wikipedia gives the respective population density of Germany and Sweden as 234/km^2 and 25/km^2. You could make Sweden a fifth of its current size - going far beyond the point at which you'd be cutting out empty northern regions - and Germany would still be about twice as dense.
Excluding city-states, Sweden is the 8th most urban country in Europe. It's significantly more densely populated than Germany by that metric.
That sort of number depends heavily on how you define urban. The wikipedia page you linked cites the World Bank but they don't provide any actual definition for what counts as urban.
ChatGPT gives the percentage of the population of Sweden that live in an area with density >500/km^2 as 15%, while that same number for Germany is 45%. This seems to suggest that Germany is significantly more densely populated than Sweden when you drill into the numbers.
I broadly agree, but I interpreted 2rafa's use of the word "settlement" to mean some sort of concession or compromise.
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