How to prepare for Home Alone Christmas 2020?

The conditions for a Home Alone Christmas vary greatly across the Nordic Region. The combination of the selected two accessibility indicators is visualised on Nordregio’s Christmas Map 2020. It classifies the Nordic municipalities into nine categories, based on:

– The share of households with fixed broadband of at least 30mbps is used to measure the quality and distribution of internet connection. The higher the percentage, the bigger chance you will have an uninterrupted online celebration!

– The average distance to grocery stores is used to estimate the time required to get your Christmas food: the closer to a grocery store, the more spontaneous you can be.

On one side of the spectrum are about a fourth of the municipalities having a high share of households (>75%) with a decent broadband connection and a short average distance to the closest grocery store (<2,5 km). This enhances last-minute Christmas preparation and high-quality online celebrations. These municipalities are colored in dark purple on the map and are mostly, but not exclusively, located in urban areas in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. On the other side of the spectrum, about 10% of Nordic municipalities have rather weak fixed broadband coverage (<50%) and relatively long travel distances to the closest grocery store (> 5km), requiring more planning for celebrating Christmas. These municipalities are colored in light purple on the map and are mostly found in sparsely population municipalities in Finland and mountainous municipalities in Norway.