Öckerö Municipality

Öckerö Municipality Öckerö kommun
Municipality
Öckerö town hall
Municipal code		1407
Website	www.ockero.se

Öckerö Municipality (Öckerö kommun) is a municipality in Västra Götaland County in western Sweden. Its seat is located in the town of Öckerö on the main island, which is also called Öckerö.

The municipality consists of islands in the

.

The municipality is one of very few in Sweden which has not been

within a rural municipality handling matters of urban character) in the municipality.

Geography

The municipality consists of ten year-round inhabited islands. They are considered to stretch from the Vinga Lighthouse up to the coastal town of Marstrand in the municipality of Kungälv. The ten islands are named:

1. Björkö
2. Fotö
3. Grötö
4. Hyppeln
5. Hälsö
6. Hönö
7. Kalvsund
8. Källö-Knippla
9. Rörö
10. Öckerö

N.B. that "ö" means "island" in Swedish, hence there are many names ending with "ö". E.g. Björkö means "Birch Island".

Of these, Hönö is the largest with some 4,800 inhabitants, and Öckerö is also fairly large with 3,100. However, all ten are inhabited by people all year around. Most islands have bridge connection between each other. However, there is no road connection to the mainland, just car ferries from western Gothenburg. The ferry connections are good with a dense schedule. A local referendum in 2003 in Öckerö Municipality rejected the plans for a future bridge to the mainland.

Demographics

This is a demographic table based on Öckerö Municipality's electoral districts in the

In total there were 12,895 residents, including 10,173 Swedish citizens of voting age.[3] 38.3% voted for the left coalition and 60.6% for the right coalition.

Location	Residents	Citizen adults	Left vote	Right vote	Employed	Swedish parents	Foreign heritage	Income SEK	Degree
			%	%
Bohus-Björkö	1,839	1,465	48.6	51.1	84	92	8	30,594	54
Fotö, Hönö S	2,547	1,962	34.3	64.1	85	92	8	29,314	41
Hyppeln, Hälsö	1,294	1,139	41.2	58.2	86	94	6	28,165	42
Hönö NO	1,666	1,311	40.1	58.8	82	92	8	25,245	31
Hönö NV	1,976	1,518	37.3	61.6	87	92	8	29,231	40
Öckerö N	1,826	1,399	32.0	66.6	85	90	10	29,108	43
Öckerö S	1,747	1,379	36.1	62.2	85	91	9	28,169	44
Source: SVT[3]

History

During the

built himself a house on Öckerö, because he was often around there with his navy.

In 1658 or thereabout, the area became Swedish together with Bohuslän.

In the middle of the 18th century, the fishing of herring blossomed into a full scaled industry, and the islands fishing communities flourished for some 50 years.

In the 1950s the coat of arms were designed. As the main industry has always been fishing, a boat and herring became symbols. The ten herrings correspond to the ten islands.

Ömål, also called öbo, is a Swedish

spoken on the islands of the Öckerö municipality. It has some features of the Gothenburg Swedish dialect (Göteborgska), but also features from English.

References

• The corresponding article on Swedish Wikipedia has been used as main reference.

External links

• Öckerö Municipality - Official site