There are several famous long distance hiking trails in the USA, connecting the Mexican border to the Canadian border. The most famous ones are the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) at 4,279 km and the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) at 4,989 km.
Europe has some well known trails such as Tour de Mont Blanc (170 km) or Kungsleden (440 km), but those are much shorter and easy to complete in a single vacation. Europes network of long-distance trails is mostly through much more populated areas (in particular as the 40% of Europe within Russia is excluded), but does include long, wild stretches in the north.
The Norge på langs (Norway end to end) is 2,700 km, the E1 in Norway is 2,105 km, and the Grensesømmen trail is 1,619 km, all including large stretches that are very wild with up to weeks between road crossings. Although shorter than PCT or CDT, completing any of those in a single season is certainly no easy task (some do it on skis, which allows for a longer season) and requires substantial preparations. Yet for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, the long-distance routes in Northern Europe are far less known than the ones in the USA. Although I haven't hiked stretches of either PCT or CDT, I've hiked parts of E1 and Grensesømmen where I would meet no other hikers for several days in a row, and I'm not sure that would happen anywhere on PCT or CDT.
Why is it that the long-distance hiking routes/trails in the USA are so much more famous than the ones in northern Europe? Is it a matter of marketing, just like how Yosemite is more famous than Rago, or are there more fundamental reasons for it, such as more trail maintenance (probably), more accommodation/shops (probably not), or a more spectacular scenery (debatable)?