Sweden's government will end the state railway company's passenger train monopoly early to increase traffic and help deal with air travel chaos caused by a cloud of volcanic ash.

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The "government has decided today to give the Swedish Transport Administration the possibility to let other train companies operate on the routes on which (state operator) SJ previously had a monopoly," the enterprise ministry said.

This was "because of the disruptions in flight traffic caused by the ash cloud from the volcano eruption in Iceland," it said in a statement.

The Swedish government had announced in March last year it would end the state railway company's monopoly on passenger traffic on October 1, 2010.

Henrik Hansson, a political adviser to the enterprise ministry, said the present regulation would apply until the legislation took over on October 1.

"The new legislation will be effective from October 1, so what we are doing is changing that date, starting from today instead of October 1," he told AFP.

This, he said, was because "we need to have more transportation facilities in the country due to this current crisis."

European air travel has been in turmoil for more than a week after a volcanic eruption in Iceland sent plumes of ash across the continent, grounding flights, closing airports and causing thousands of passengers to be stranded.

Sweden's freight train traffic was deregulated at the beginning of the decade.