REVIEW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SWEDISH HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

As one of the Nordic countries,Sweden has special geographic and social environment,which pro-vide special background for human geography.After WWⅡ,Sweden started to build up the public welfare system,and at the same time,human geography in Sweden made big progress.Although human geography in Sweden does not have so many research fields as American human geography does,it has made excellent achievements in some fields in the past 100 years.This article tries to analyse three most important research fields by reviewing the development of the human geography in Sweden.Since 1870s when SSAG(Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography) was first built up,it was the home of geography in Sweden.In 1950s,human geography began to be seperated from physical geography,and then quickly played an impor-tant role in planning research.From 1946 to 1954,hundreds of research reports came out,which then became the most popular field of human geography.More and more students and researchers became interested in the application of planning rather than theories researches.Therefore,planning research became the easiest for human geographers in Sweden to participate in the cities development.At the beginning of 20th century,re-searchers made an appeal for the research of historical geography.Since the 1960s,when some were busy with constructions,some others became interested in landscape and historical geography.Inheriting the re-search tradition of landscape which had spreaded all around European countries,Swedish researchers have founded an characteristic research groundwork and direction.The third important research field—Time geog-raphy is the most widely-spreaded achievement of Swedish human geography,which represents a new struc-ture with time and space,and constitutes the foundation for general geographical perspective.Since 1930s when Hgerstrand first mentioned it,it had been giving tremendous impacts on Swedish human geography.Even today,it is also the spirit of Swedish human geography.