Sweden

Sweden occupies the Fennoscandian shield, ancient Precambrian crust with essentially no active tectonics. Natural seismicity is very low: the strongest instrumentally recorded events within Sweden have reached approximately [[magnitude]] 4.5 offshore in the Gulf of Bothnia and in the Skagerrak, but onshore events rarely exceed M 3. Felt earthquakes occur sporadically — perhaps a few per year across the entire country — and there is no record of earthquake-caused casualties or significant structural damage in Swedish history.

The primary driver of Sweden's minor seismicity is postglacial rebound: the Fennoscandian land mass is still rising at up to 10 mm/year in northern Sweden as it adjusts isostatically to the removal of the Weichselian ice sheet (completed ~10,000 years ago), and this uplift occasionally generates small [[seismic-wave|seismic]] events on ancient basement faults. Paleoseismic investigations have identified large postglacial fault scarps in northern Sweden (including the Pärvie Fault and Merasjärvi Fault) that ruptured in M 7–8 events immediately after deglaciation. These events cannot be expected to recur at such size under current loading conditions. Sweden applies minimal seismic design requirements, and the country's earthquake risk is negligible for ordinary engineering purposes.