Sprint classical gold medallist Linn Svahn went out first for the Swedes, and quickly established a narrow lead, allowing her to avoid an early crash that saw four skiiers hit the deck on one of the first corners under difficult conditions.
Svahn conserved energy midway through her leg dropping back to fifth at points, before pushing hard in the final kilometre and opening up a 7.2-second lead over Italy when she handed over to Ebba Andersson.
But early in Andersson's leg, she was being closed by Norway's Astrid Slind when she clipped her challenger's ski and fell, leaving her third behind Slind and Italy's Catarina Ganz.
The two-time silver medallist at these games began to slowly recover, going second, only to suffer a second fall in which she lost a ski. Losing valuable time while she waited for a replacement, Andersson eventually finished in eighth, 1:18 behind leaders Norway as she handed over to Frida Karlsson.
Karlsson had already won the 10km freestyle and 20km skiathlon at Milan-Cortina, and she managed to move up three places in the first of her two laps on freestyle skis, but more importantly, only made up eight seconds on Norway's Karoline Simpson-Larsen.
Consistency from Simpson-Larsen meant she handed over to Heidi Weng with a 40-second lead over Finland, while Karlsson only made up 12 seconds on the lead to hand over to Jonna Sundling 1:06 behind, in fourth place behind the Italians.
Sundling wasted no time in overtaking Federica Cassol to move into the medal positions, then closed in on Finland's Jasmi Joensuu, with only one second between the two at halfway.
Norway's Weng cruised over the line in first place in a time of 1:15:44.8, by which point Sundling had outclassed Joensuu to move into second and come in 50.9 seconds down, 15 seconds clear of the Finns who took bronze.
