(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/121127-baltic-today.photoblog600.jpg)Alister Doyle / ReutersHans Lindberg, a 56-year-old Swede, points toward an area of reeds that has risen from the Baltic Sea, forming a land bridge to what used to be an island where he spent his summers as a child in the early 1960s.By ReutersLULEA, Sweden -- A Stone Age camp that used to be by the shore is now 125 miles from the Baltic Sea. Sheep graze on what was the seabed in the 15th century. And Sweden's port of Lulea risks getting too shallow for ships.
Follow @NBCNewsWorld (http://twitter.com/NBCNewsWorld) In contrast to worries from the Maldives to Manhattan of storm surges and higher ocean levels caused by climate change, the entire northern part of the Nordic region is rising and, as a result, the Baltic Sea is receding.
"In a way we're lucky," said Lena Bengten, environmental strategist at the Lulea Municipality in Sweden, pointing to damage from superstorm Sandy that killed more than 200 people from Haiti to the United States.
The uplift of almost 0.4 inches a year, one of the highest rates in the world, is part of a continuing geological rebound since the end of the Ice Age removed a vast ice sheet from regions around the Arctic Circle.
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