Co-location index: Nordics
The Nordics Co-location Index evaluates commercial nodes across Northern Europe using the Retail co-location methodology and the deterministic ranking system. The index evaluates sites where IKEA operates as the Primary Target anchor, against secondary and tertiary infrastructure within defined catchment radii. The Nordics are one of the four markets covered in the co-location tier system; recent coverage expansions are documented in Nordic and UK coverage expansion.
Anchor Network
IKEA maintains approximately 55 stores across the Nordic region: Sweden (~20), Denmark (~8), Norway (~8), Finland (~7), and Iceland (~1).
Correction (2026-08-02): the listed components sum to 44 (20+8+8+7+1), not 55 — too large a gap (~25%) to be rounding. Flagged, not resolved. Secondary anchors vary by country: Bauhaus DIY operates in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland; Biltema and Jula cover Sweden and Norway; Stark operates in Denmark. The Nordic healthcare and university systems concentrate infrastructure in capital cities and major university towns — Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Oslo, Bergen, Helsinki, and Tampere each have major hospital systems and research universities within the same urban catchment areas as IKEA stores.
Nordic market characteristics
The Nordic region's smaller geographic spread means fewer distinct co-location nodes compared to larger markets, but each qualifying node benefits from the density of institutional infrastructure typical of Nordic urban planning. Nordic cities tend to site large-format retail, civic hospitals, and university campuses within the same suburban zone.
District — premier Nordic hubs
A District-tier node pairs the IKEA primary anchor with at least one hardware or warehouse secondary — Bauhaus, Biltema, Jula, and Stark are the operators that most often satisfy this gate, by country — top-quartile catchment population, and hospital access within the civic ring. These sites represent the most consistently validated commercial environments the Nordic dataset currently identifies.
The site index for the Nordics, classified under the current tier system, is available at gis.woodfinegroup.com.
Provenance
- Verification: Anchor network data sourced from OpenStreetMap records as of May 2026.
See also
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