Characteristics of lightning flashes in Sweden were measured by recording the electric fields generated by the whole flash in microsecond resolution. The results were gathered from five thunderstorms occurring within 50--100 km from the measuring site. For negative ground flashes the geometric and arithmetic mean of the interstroke intervals were 48 ms and 65 ms, respectively. The corresponding values for the positive ground flashes were 64 ms and 92 ms, respectively. It was found that about 24% of the negative multiple-stroke ground flashes had at least one subsequent stroke with a peak electric field larger than that of the first return stroke. Furthermore, about 15% of the subsequent strokes had peak electric field amplitudes larger than those of the first return strokes. The geometric mean of the ratio of the subsequent stroke peak field to the first return stroke peak field was 0.5. The mean number of strokes per flash was 3.4 and 18% of the flashes were single-stroke flashes. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1994