following population development in Sweden: Eurostat projects a population in Sweden reaching 11,994,364 people in 2040 and 14,388,478 in 2080. Urbanisation and population density The population density is just over 25 people per km2 (65 per square mile), with 1,437 persons per km2 in localities (continuous settlement with at least 200 inhabitants)., 87% of the population live in urban areas, which cover 1.5% of the entire land area. 63% of Swedes are in large urban areas. The population density is substantially higher in the south than in the north. The capital city Stockholm has a municipal population of about 950,000 (with 1.5 million in the urban area and 2.3 million in the metropolitan area). The second- and third-largest cities are Gothenburg and Malmö. Greater Gothenburg counts just over a million inhabitants and the same goes for the western part of Scania, along the Öresund. The Öresund Region, the Danish-Swedish cross-border region around the Öresund that Malmö is part of, has a population of 4 million. Outside of major cities, areas with notably higher population density include the agricultural part of Östergötland, the western coast, the area around Lake Mälaren and the agricultural area around Uppsala. Norrland, which covers approximately 60% of the Swedish territory, has a very low population density (below 5 people per square kilometer). The mountains and most of the remote coastal areas are almost unpopulated. Low population density exists also in large parts of western Svealand, as well as southern and central Småland. An area known as Finnveden, which is located in the south-west of Småland, and mainly below the 57th parallel, can also be considered as almost empty of people. Origin The majority of the population are ethnic Swedes, or people who can trace most of their ethnicity to Sweden going back at least 12 generations. The Sweden Finns are a large ethnic minority comprising approximately 50,000 along the Swedish-Finnish border, and 450,000 first and second-generation immigrated ethnic Finns, mainly living in the Mälaren Valley region. Meänkieli Finnish has official status in parts of northern Sweden near the Finnish border. In addition, Sweden's indigenous population groups include the Sami people, who have a history of practicing hunting and gathering and gradually adopting a largely semi-nomadic reindeer herding lifestyle. While the Sámi have lived in Fennoscandia from at earliest 3,500 years to at latest around 2,650 years, Sámi settlement of Scandinavia does not predate Norse/Scandinavian settlement of