Ownership Structure
Who owns the Swedish forest? How old are the forest owners and where in the country do they live? Here you find statistics about the ownership of the Swedish forest.
The statistics are based on agricultural units from the property tax assessment and the basis for the information is thus based on the information that the property owners themselves provide in the declaration. The area reported in the statistics therefore refers to submitted productive forest land. The statistics are included in the Official Statistics of Sweden and have product number JO1405.
Property and ownership structure in 2024
The average holding among Swedish forest owners (natural persons) has increased from 30 hectares in 1999 to 34 hectares in 2024. The median has, however, decreased from 13 to 11 hectares in the same period.
Declared area of productive forest land
The area of declared productive forest land amounts to just under 24 million hectares, according to the 2024 property assessment register. In this text describing the statistics, reference is made throughout to declared area of productive forest land, which is the area specified by the property owners themselves in their property tax declaration. The National Forest Inventory provides the official statistics on area of forest land in Sweden.
Figure 1 shows the area of declared productive forest land divided into ownership classes. Definitions of the ownership classes can be found here:
The ownership class of individual owners, which includes natural persons, estates and simple companies that are not trading companies, owns the largest area of productive forest land in 2024 (48 percent). The second largest area is found in the class Privately owned limited companies (25 percent), followed by State owned companies/corporations (13 percent) and the State (6 percent). Other private owners and Other public owners have 6 and 2 percent respectively of the declared productive forest land. For some areas the ownership class cannot be determined. These only represent a small percentage and have therefore been excluded in Figure 1 below. The development over time is relatively stable according to Figure 1.
According to figure 2, the ownership classes State have 1.8 million hectares and State owned companies/corporations have 3 million hectares. These ownership classes have large parts of their holdings in the region Norra Norrland with 69 and 67 percent respectively. The holdings of Private-sector companies/corporations (5.8 million hectares) are mainly located in the region Södra Norrland with 47 percent. The distribution within the ownership classes Individual owners (11.3 million hectares), Other private owners (1.5 million hectares) and Other public owners (0.4 million hectares) are relatively even across the country.
According to Figure 2, the largest area of declared productive forest land is in Norra Norrland (7.5 million hectares), and the largest ownership class are Individual owners, who own about 34 percent. The second largest is Södra Norrland (5.9 million hectares) and here the largest ownership class is Private-sector companies/corporations, which owns approximately 46 percent. Third is Svealand (5.5 million hectares) where the largest ownership class is Individual owners who own about 46 percent. In Götaland there are 4.8 million hectares, and the dominant ownership class is Individual owners with 77 percent.
In Norrbotten County, 4.3 million hectares are declared, which can be compared to 186,000 hectares in Blekinge and 126,000 hectares on Gotland. Statistics for both counties and municipalities can be found in the
The size of the holding
In Figure 3 the size of the holding (per owner) for different ownership classes have been calculated and it refers to all the area regardless of where it is located. In 2024, the ownership classes the State, State owned companies/corporations, Private-sector companies/corporations and Other private owners have 90 percent or more of their holdings in the size class larger than 1,000 hectares. The corresponding share for Other public owners is 79 percent and only 8 percent for Individual owners.
Footnote: Size class is calculated according to shares.
In general, for all ownership classes, there are two different trends between the years 1999 and 2024. One for size classes larger than 100 hectares, where the area increases slightly, and in size classes smaller than 100 hectares, where the area decreases slightly. This is largely explained later in Figure 4 with the change in Individual owners.
According to figure 4, the area of declared productive forest land for individual owners decreases between the years 1999-2024. Mainly in holdings larger than five hectares up to 100 hectares decrease, while holdings in the size classes above 100 hectares are increasing. For the smallest size class, 5 hectares or less, there is a marginal increase.
In 1999, the declared average holding among natural persons (who make up about 97 percent of the individual owners) was 30 hectares, while the average in 2024 is 34 hectares. The median, which is the most common holding in terms of size, has however decreased from 13 hectares in 1999 to 11 hectares in 2024. An explanation for these different trends can be seen later in Figure 6.
The gender-wise differences are illustrated in Figure 5. In 2024, the median for men is 14 hectares and 9 hectares for women. During the same year, the average holding for men is about 40 hectares compared to the average holding for women, which is about 25 hectares.
Figure 6 shows that the number of forest owners in the smallest size class has increased, as well as an increase in all size classes from >100-200 hectares and up. The classes >5-20, >20-50 and >50-100 hectares, on the other hand, have decreased relatively sharply in number between 1999 and 2024. This can also explain the trend in Figure 5 about why the average holding increases while the median decreases between years.
Number of forest owners (natural persons)
In 1999, a total of 354,288 (natural persons) owned forest land in Sweden and they have decreased over time to 308,565 in 2024. Of these, 98 percent were resident in Sweden, while 2 percent were resident abroad. During the period from 1999 to the year 2024, the proportion residing abroad has increased from 1 to almost 2 percent, or from 3,352 to 7,665 persons. The largest part of forest owners living abroad reside in the Nordic region, 4,153 according to records from the property assessment register 2024.
The number of natural persons who are forest owners (resident in Sweden) decreased between the years 1999 and 2024 by 50,036. The decrease can be seen in all parts of the country during that period. Figure 7 shows that the largest decrease is found in Götaland, where the number of forest-owning men has decreased by a total of 16,353. The number of women is also decreasing, but the trend is not as strong for them.
Figure 8 shows that Västra Götaland county is where the most forest owners live, 44,426, followed by Stockholm County with 25,187 and Västerbotten County with 22,144. Of the forest owners (natural persons) in 2024, 59,6 percent were men, 38,7 percent women and 1,7 percent had no information on gender. The changes in the gender distribution are small for the period from 1999 to 2024. Also in 1999, the proportion of women was 38 percent, while the proportion of men was 61 percent and for 1 percent there were no information on gender. Regionally, the proportion of women varies between counties from 45 to 35 percent. The largest proportion of female forest owners (45 percent) live in Stockholm County.
New forest owners
8,646 forest owners, natural persons were added in 2024 compared to the previous year. Of these, 48 percent were women and 52 percent were men. 1,145 of the new forest owners are residing in Västra Götaland County and 965 in Stockholm County. The average age of new forest owners is 48 years, the average age for men is 47 years and 50 years for women. The oldest new forest owners can be found in Stockholm and Uppsala counties with an average age of 52 years and the youngest can be found in Blekinge county with an average age of 43 years.
Co-ownership
The joint ownership between men and women is shown in the figure below. Figure 10 shows the three classes Female, Male and Both genders for natural persons where information about gender is available. If one or more women and men jointly own (one or more), these are divided into the class Both sexes. These own 3 million hectares in 2024. 1.6 million hectares are owned only by women, one or more jointly in the class Female and the corresponding calculation is made for men in the class Male, and they own almost 6.2 million hectares in 2024.
The development over time shows that the share of area of declared productive forest land owned by both sexes has decreased from 31 percent in 1999 to 28 percent in 2024. At the same time, the share of forest land owned by men only has increased from 54 percent in 1999 to 56 percent in 2024. The share of the area where women account for the entire holding has seen a slight increase during the period from 14 to 15 percent.
Regionally, there are differences between the counties and the development also varies in relation to the development for the whole country.
The age of the forest owners
During the period 1999 to 2024, the average age of forest owners (natural persons) has increased from an average of 55 to 61 years, regardless of gender. Regionally, there are some differences between counties regarding average age and for 2024 the range varies from an average age from 60 years to 63 years.
Management units
A management unit consists of the productive forest land within a municipality that belongs to the same constellation of owners. The number of management units in Sweden has decreased from 245,583 to 230,800 between 1999 and 2024.
Figure 11 illustrates the number of management units by county, Götaland has almost three times as many management units as Norra- or Södra Norrland. Svealand has almost twice as many as the Norrland counties.
According to figure 12, the number of management units owned by natural persons has decreased during the period 1999 to 2024 from just over 236,000 to just under 220,000. The management units owned by natural persons can be divided into non-resident, locally owned and partly non-resident based on where the owner lives in relation to where the management units are located.
During the period 1999 to 2024, the number of leased use units increased from 22 percent to 27 percent, while the number of partly non-resident management units decreased from 9 to 6 percent in 2024. The number of locally owned units decreased slightly during the period. However, the proportion of locally owned management units, is quite constant during the period, from 68 to 67 percent comparing 1999 to 2024.
Regionally, there are differences between counties regarding non-resident ownership. According to Figure 13, the largest share of non-resident is found in Jämtland County with 38 percent, followed by Dalarna with 34. The largest share of locally owned management units in 2024 is found in Gotland County with 81 percent, followed by Uppsala County with 78 percent.
Forest ownership per municipality
Area of declared productive forest land in municipalities can vary between different years, and a few municipalities in Sweden have no declared productive forest land.
Jokkmokk municipality has the largest area of declared forest land among municipalities in Sweden in 2024 with more than 956,000 hectares. Jokkmokk is followed by Härjedalen and Strömsund municipalities with 637,000 and 627,000 hectares respectively. Skellefteå has the largest number of forest owners who own land in the municipality, with 7,179 owners spread over 4,996 farming units. More statistics by municipality can be found in the Statistics database.