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Sweden has 11 million citizens, 2.5 millions in Stockholm metropolitan area. Norway has 5 million people, 1.8 millions living in Oslo metropolitan area. Finland has 5.5 million citizens, 1.7 millions living in Greater Helsinki. Lots of countryside elsewhere. The Nordic countries are quite comparable.

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Perhaps we should also be looking at population density:

Stockholm: 11,802/sqm

Oslo: 4,268/sqm

Helsinki: 3,670/sqm

Sure, but covid spreads during social events, it's schools, bars, concerts, churches, and you find more of that in urban aggregations than in the flat countryside.

I do not where you got these numbers from.

Wikipedia:

Helsinki: 3,070.08/km2 (7,951.5/sq mi)

I just picked the first google result, which happens to be metric, so I mixed that up.

It looks like the first Google result is for the Capital Region (1.1 million people, 1418 per squqare km, 3670 per sq mile). The stat in the comment you're replying to is for Helsinki proper which only has 600,000 or so residents, and Greater Helsinki is less dense than any of these.

No matter how you slice the figures, Stockholm seems to be a bigger denser city than Helsinki or Oslo.

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