Ownership Structure
Who owns the Swedish forests? 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 from year 1999 and onwards.
The statistics are based on agricultural units from the property tax assessment register. The data therefore rely on information provided by property owners in their declarations. 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 2025
The average holding size among Swedish forest owners (natural persons) has increased from 31 hectares in 1999 to 36 hectares in 2025. During the same period, the median holding size decreased from 13 to 11 hectares.
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.
Definitions and explanations
Declared productive forest land in these statistics is the sum of what in the Property taxation Act is referred to as productive forest land without harvesting restrictions and productive forest land with harvesting restrictions.
Productive forest land without harvesting restrictions
Productive forest land not subject to harvesting restrictions.
Productive forest land with harvesting restrictions
Productive forest land subject to harvesting restrictions. Productive forest land refers to the same as in 2 § in The Forestry Act of the (1979:429). Harvesting restrictions refers to harvesting bans, requirements on retention, maximization of clearing size or timber harvest or coniferous forest bans according to regulation in nature reserves or biotope protection areas.
Ownership classes in forestry statistics
State
Swedish state-owned institutions, funds and foundations whose assignment includes managing Swedish state forest property, for example the Swedish Forest Agency.
State owned companies/corporations
Companies/corporations more than 50 percent administrated by the Swedish government, for example Sveaskog AB.
Other public owners
Swedish local and county councils including limited companies, foundations and funds owned to 50 percent or more by local and county councils.
Private-sector companies/corporations
Company/corporation that is more than 50 percent privately owned.
Individual owners
Natural persons, estates and companies that are not limited companies.
Other private owners
Religious associations including the Swedish Church, privately owned foundations and funds, profit and non-profit associations, profit driven community groups.
Forest owner
The concept forest owner (natural persons) used in the statistics refers to someone who owns at least 1,0 hectare of productive forest land, either on their own or with someone else.
Facts about the statistics on property and ownership structure
Our statistical database contains statistics from Swedish Forest Agency. Produce a table by selecting your subject and variables.
Declared area of productive forest land
According to the 2025 property assessment register, the declared area of productive forest land amounts to just over 23 million hectares.
Throughout this text, the term declared area of productive forest land refers to the area reported by property owners in their property tax declarations. The National Forest Inventory provides the official statistics on forest land area in Sweden.
Figure 1 shows the declared area of productive forest land by ownership class. Definitions of the ownership classes are available here.
The ownership class Individual owners, which includes natural persons, estates, and simple companies that are not trading companies, owned the largest share of productive forest land in 2025 (49 percent). The second largest share was held by Privately owned limited companies (25 percent), followed by State-owned companies/corporations (13 percent) and the State (5 percent). Other private owners and Other public owners accounted for 6 and 2 percent, respectively, of the declared productive forest land. For a small proportion of the area, the ownership class could not be determined. These areas have been excluded from Figure 1 below. As shown in Figure 1, the ownership structure has remained relatively stable over time.
According to Figure 2, the ownership class State holds 1.3 million hectares, while State-owned companies/corporations hold 3.0 million hectares. A large proportion of these holdings are located in the Norra Norrland region, accounting for 62 and 67 percent respectively. The holdings of Private-sector companies/corporations (5.8 million hectares) are mainly located in the Södra Norrland region, where 47 percent of their land is found. The distribution of holdings 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) is relatively even across the country.
According to Figure 2, the largest area of declared productive forest land is found in Norra Norrland (7.0 million hectares), where the largest ownership class is Individual owners, holding approximately 36 percent of the area. The second largest region is Södra Norrland (5.9 million hectares), where Private-sector companies/corporations are the dominant ownership class, owning approximately 45 percent. Svealand ranks third with 5.5 million hectares, and here Individual owners are the largest ownership class, holding about 46 percent of the area. Götaland also has 4.9 million hectares of declared productive forest land. The dominant ownership class in this region is Individual owners, who own 77 percent of the area. In Norrbotten County, 3.8 million hectares of productive forest land are declared, compared with 186,000 hectares in Blekinge County and 126,000 hectares on Gotland.
Statistics for both counties and municipalities are available in the Statistics Database.
Size of the holding
Figure 3 shows the distribution of holding sizes per owner for the different ownership classes. The calculations are based on the owners’ total holdings, regardless of where the land is located. In 2025, 90 percent or more of the holdings within the ownership classes State, State-owned companies/corporations, Private-sector companies/corporations, and Other private owners belonged to the size class larger than 1,000 hectares. The corresponding share was 79 percent for Other public owners, compared with only 8 percent for Individual owners.
Footnote: Size class is calculated according to shares.
Overall, the ownership classes show two general trends between 1999 and 2025. For holding size classes larger than 100 hectares, the area has increased slightly, while the area in holding size classes smaller than 100 hectares has decreased slightly. This trend is largely explained by the changes among Individual owners, as shown in Figure 4.
According to Figure 4, the area of declared productive forest land owned by Individual owners decreased between 1999 and 2025. The decrease mainly occurred in holdings up to 100 hectares, while holdings larger than 100 hectares increased.
In 1999, the average declared holding among natural persons (who account for approximately 96 percent of all Individual owners) was 31 hectares. By 2025, the average holding had increased to 36 hectares.
The median holding size, meaning that half of the holdings are smaller and half are larger than this value, decreased from 13 hectares in 1999 to 11 hectares in 2025. An explanation for these differing trends is presented later in Figure 6. Gender differences are illustrated in Figure 5. In 2025, the median holding size was 14 hectares for men and 9 hectares for women. During the same year, the average holding size for men was approximately 43 hectares, compared with 26 hectares for women.
Figure 6 shows that the number of forest owners has increased in the smallest size class, as well as in all size classes from >100–200 hectares and upwards. In contrast, the size classes >5–20, >20–50, and >50–100 hectares decreased relatively sharply between 1999 and 2025. This development also helps explain the trend shown in Figure 5, namely that the average holding size increased while the median holding size decreased between 1999 and 2025.
Number of forest owners (natural persons)
In 1999, a total of 354,288 natural persons owned forest land in Sweden. By 2025, this number had decreased to 307,665.
Of the forest owners in 2025, 97 percent were resident in Sweden, while 3 percent were resident abroad. Between 1999 and 2025, the proportion of forest owners living abroad increased from 1 to 3 percent, corresponding to an increase from 3,352 to 7,955 persons. Most forest owners residing abroad lived in the Nordic region, amounting to 4,250 persons according to the 2025 property assessment register.
The number of forest owners who were natural persons and resident in Sweden decreased by 51,266 between 1999 and 2025. The decrease occurred across all parts of the country during this period. Figure 7 shows that the largest decline was in Götaland, where the number of male forest owners decreased by 16,787. The number of female forest owners also declined, although the decrease was less pronounced.
Figure 8 shows that Västra Götaland County had the largest number of forest owners in 2025, with 44,172 persons, followed by Stockholm County with 25,329 and Västerbotten County with 22,017. Among forest owners (natural persons) in 2025, 59.5 percent were men, 38.7 percent were women, and for 1.7 percent no information on gender was available. Changes in the gender distribution were small during the period 1999–2025. In 1999, 61 percent of forest owners were men, 38 percent were women, and for 1 percent no information on gender was available. Regionally, the proportion of women varied between counties from 35 to 44 percent. The highest proportion of female forest owners was found in Stockholm County (44 percent), while the lowest proportion was found in Norrbotten County (35 percent).
New forest owners
In 2025, 9,380 new forest owners who were natural persons were added compared with the previous year. Of these, 47 percent were women and 53 percent were men. The largest numbers of new forest owners were registered in Västra Götaland County (1,231 persons) and Stockholm County (1,099 persons). The average age of new forest owners was 48 years. The average age was 47 years for men and 50 years for women. The highest average age among new forest owners was found in Stockholm County, at 51 years, while the lowest average age was found in Blekinge County and Jönköping County, at 45 years.
Co-ownership
Joint ownership between men and women is illustrated in Figure 10. The figure presents the three classes Female, Male, and Both genders for natural persons where information on gender is available. If one or more women and one or more men jointly own one or more holdings, the ownership is classified as Both genders. In 2025, this class owned 3.0 million hectares of declared productive forest land. Holdings owned exclusively by one or more women accounted for 1.6 million hectares in 2025, while holdings owned exclusively by one or more men accounted for almost 6.2 million hectares. Over time, the share of declared productive forest land jointly owned by both genders decreased from 32 percent in 1999 to 28 percent in 2025. During the same period, the share owned exclusively by men increased from 54 percent to 57 percent. The share of forest land owned exclusively by women increased slightly, from 14 percent to 15 percent.
There are regional differences between counties, and the trends also vary in relation to the development observed for the country as a whole.
The age of the forest owners
Between 1999 and 2025, the average age of forest owners (natural persons) increased from 55 to 61 years, regardless of gender. There are some regional differences between counties in terms of average age. In 2025, the county averages ranged from 61 to 63 years.
Forest ownership per municipality
The area of declared productive forest land may vary between years for individual municipalities, and a few municipalities in Sweden have no declared productive forest land.
In 2025, Härjedalen Municipality had the largest area of declared productive forest land in Sweden, with 633,000 hectares. It was followed by Strömsund and Jokkmokk municipalities, with 627,000 and 515,000 hectares respectively. Skellefteå Municipality had the largest number of forest owners with holdings in the municipality, with 7,145 owners distributed across 4,977 agricultural holdings. Additional municipal-level statistics are available in the Statistics Database.