Oslo, June 13 (RHC)-- Norway will allow travel to and from Finland, Iceland and the Swedish island of Gotland from Monday, but will maintain travel restrictions on mainland Sweden due to its higher level of COVID-19 cases.

Denmark, Finland and Norway have lifted some of the controls on leisure travel they imposed to slow the coronavirus pandemic, but they have kept most of those imposed on Sweden, the most populous of the Nordic countries.

Leaving most of Sweden out of the arrangements breaks with long-standing close cooperation between the Nordic countries, and goes against the wishes of the European Commission, which wants to lift by Monday the internal borders in the Schengen travel area, which in normal times has no borders.