While litter-dwelling earthworms are widespread in northern Scandinavian forests, burrowing earthworms, i.e., species commonly considered as ecosystem engineers, are largely missing in these ecosystems. We hypothesized that their absence results not only from environmental filtering by unfavorable soil and climatic conditions but also from dispersal limitation. We examined earthworm presence-absence across Swedish forests by environmental DNA (eDNA) sequencing of 312 soil inventory samples. We then used statistical models to identify factors best explaining their occurrence among a set of variables representing soil properties, climatic factors, vegetation and distances to anthropogenic activities (e.g. roads and agricultural fields). Soil pH and texture were strong explanatory variables for the presence of burrowing earthworms, while distance to agricultural fields explained a significant part of the remaining variation. The importance of proximity to agricultural fields was especially pronounced in northern Sweden (>60° latitude). In contrast, occurrence of litter-dwelling earthworms was only weakly linked to environmental variables. Additionally, based on random forest modelling we predicted earthworm presence for almost 7000 soil inventory sites, and created high-resolution probability maps of earthworm occurrence in Swedish forests, including a scenario without potential dispersal limitation. These maps show that occurrence of burrowing earthworms would be more likely in large parts of the northern inland forests of Sweden without dispersal limitations, suggesting that these forests may be more susceptible to earthworm establishment upon introduction than previously anticipated. Our results highlight the importance of anthropogenic activities in dispersion and distribution of burrowing earthworms in northern forests. While environmental filtering largely governs burrowing earthworm occurrence, their current distribution is also substantially influenced by dispersal limitation - an underestimated factor to date.