Sweden

Sweden and other Nordic countries have log houses painted a deep red — Falu red.

The dashes in the road's edge line are short. The line even changes clearly right at the Norway-Sweden border.

The pedestrian warning sign shows four crosswalk stripes.

Street names end in gatan (street) or vägen (road).

The number on a sign is a road number. Two-digit numbers run from 9-99 south to north; three-digit numbers run roughly 100-400 south to north.

Vegetation and soil color vary by region.

• Far south (#00FF02): flat, with farmland
• Southern conifer belt (#025D00/#005E00): conifers dominate, but round-topped broadleaf trees like beech and oak also grow here
• North (#427D85): conifers dominate heavily, with fewer broadleaf trees
• Northern border area (#7D827C): bare rock or snow cover

If the forest breaks and gently rolling large fields stretch to the horizon, with clear sightlines between houses, that's Skåne County (the southern tip).

Once the spruce and pine forest ends and gives way to a belt of low, twisted birch, and then to bare, rounded mountains above that, you're in the fjäll (mountains) along the Norwegian border.

A plain with almost no trees or shrubs, where flat limestone slabs are exposed at the surface under a thin skin of grass, means an alvar (a limestone plain with almost no soil) on Öland or Gotland.

If both sides of the road stay walled in by spruce and pine forest, occasionally broken by clearcuts or blocks of even-height saplings planted close together, that means forestry country centered on Norrland (the northern half).

Round-topped broadleaf trees (beech, oak) standing out in forests or tree-lined roads point to the south. Beech forests dominate in Skåne County and on the west coast (Halland County).

In the far north, where there's usually nothing but forest and lakes, a sudden view of a massive terraced open-pit mine carved into a mountain, reddish-brown waste rock piles, and long ore trains means the iron mining district of Norrbotten County (Kiruna and others).