Blekinge

Coordinates: 56°20′N 15°20′E / 56.333°N 15.333°E / 56.333; 15.333
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the traditional province. For the administrative county, see Blekinge County. For Riksdag constituency, see Blekinge County (Riksdag constituency).
Blekinge
Historical province
UTC+2 (CEST)
Area codes0454–0457

Blekinge (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈblêːkɪŋɛ] ⓘ, is one of the traditional Swedish provinces (landskap), situated in the southern coast of the geographic region of Götaland, in southern Sweden. It borders Småland, Scania and the Baltic Sea. It is the country's second-smallest province by area (only Öland is smaller), and the smallest province located on the mainland.

The name "Blekinge" comes from the dialectal adjective

nautical term
for "dead calm".

Administration

The historical provinces of Sweden serve no administrative function. However, Blekinge is the only province, besides Gotland, which covers exactly the same area as the administrative county, which is Blekinge County.

Blekinge was granted its current arms in 1660 at the time of the funeral of King

Charles X Gustav of Sweden (1622–1660) based on a seal from the 15th century. Symbolically the three crowns from the Coat of arms of Sweden had been placed on the trunk of the tree to mark the change in status of the former Danish province, that now belonged to Sweden. The arms is represented with a ducal coronet. Blazon: "Azure, an Oak Tree eradicated Or ensigned with three Crowns palewise of the same."[2]

Geography

Relative to the rest of Sweden Blekinge has warm summers and mild winters.[3] Blekinge has a scenic archipelago and is sometimes called "Sweden's garden" (Swedish: Sveriges trädgård).[4]

The nature of Blekinge is characterized by its oak forests with occasional hazel and common hornbeam.[3] The relief is an uneven joint valley terrain with straight and narrow valley bottoms that widen towards the coast.[3] Bedrock in Blekinge is mostly granite and gneiss of the Blekinge-Bornholm rock province.[3][5]

History

Evidence of human habitation in western Blekinge dates circa 9700 BC in the Vesan area. At this time, Vesan was a small island surrounded by open grassland. A later settlement in the nearby Ljungaviken is dated to 6500 BC and contains the remains of at least 50 wooden houses and a buried dog.[6]

Blekinge was a part of

Skåne and Halland, it made up Skåneland. The eastern part of the Danish kingdom where Scanian Law (Skånske Lov) prevailed. As a border province, Blekinge was often raided and looted by Swedish troops during Danish–Swedish wars. In 1658, it was ceded to Sweden according to the Treaty of Roskilde and has remained Swedish ever since.[8]

During the Danish era, the port town of

city privileges were: Ronneby (1387), Sölvesborg (1445), Elleholm and Kristianopel. After the Swedish takeover two new towns, Karlshamn (chartered in 1664) and Karlskrona (1680), were built, and the populations of Ronneby and Kristianopel were forcibly relocated to them. Karlskrona has for more than 300 years been the principal naval base in Sweden.[9]
[10]

Subdivisions

Medelstad Hundred
.

Language

In Blekinge the dialect was historically closely related to Danish and eastern

Scanian, which is most likely an effect of the former administrative links to Scania
. Today, the dialect is not as significant as before, with the exception of Listerlandet with its special language.

Sports

Football in the province is administered by Blekinge Fotbollförbund.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Folkmängd i landskapen den 31 december 2016" (in Swedish). Statistics Sweden. 21 March 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017.
  2. ^ "Karl X Gustav – en våghals på tronen". popularhistoria.se. 23 May 2017. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  3. ^
    ISBN 9789138082393
    .
  4. ^ "På tur i Sveriges trädgård". tradgardsriket.se. Archived from the original on April 17, 2019. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  5. S2CID 129372111
    .
  6. ISBN 978-91-983465-3-4
    .
  7. ^ Magnus Edekling, "När blev Blekinge danskt?"
  8. ^ "Forsvenskning af skånelandene (1680erne)". sydsverige.dk. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  9. ^ "Sölvesborgs Slotsruin". sydsverige.dk. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  10. ^ "Naval Port of Karlskrona - World Heritage Site - Pictures, info and travel reports". Worldheritagesite.org. Archived from the original on 27 February 2015. Retrieved 18 February 2015.

External links

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Blekinge.
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