Northern Europe and the Scandinavian Peninsula

Northern Europe, commonly identified with the Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, together with the autonomous territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, occupies some of the highest latitudes of permanently inhabited land on Earth, with parts of northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland lying entirely within the Arctic Circle. Norway and Sweden share the Scandinavian Peninsula, Europe's largest, dominated along its western spine by the Scandinavian Mountains, which reach their highest point at Galdhøpiggen in Norway at 2,469 meters. Repeated Pleistocene glaciation carved the peninsula's western coast into a dramatic sequence of fjords, narrow, steep-sided inlets drowned by rising post-glacial sea levels; Norway's Sognefjord, the longest, extends 205 kilometers inland and reaches depths of over 1,300 meters.