Norrbotten

Coordinates: 67°00′N 20°00′E / 67.000°N 20.000°E / 67.000; 20.000
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the Swedish historical province. For the modern county, see Norrbotten County.

Norrbotten
Historical province
UTC+2 (CEST
)

Norrbotten (Swedish: [ˈnɔ̂rːˌbɔtːɛn]), known in English as North Bothnia, is a Swedish province (landskap) in northernmost Sweden. It borders south to Västerbotten, west to Swedish Lapland, and east to Finland.

Administration

The traditional

Lappland and Västerbotten
. After that, northern Västerbotten has gradually evolved as a province of its own.

Heraldry

Not being one of the old historical provinces of Sweden Norrbotten had not been granted a coat of arms in the same way as the others. As recently as 1995, after decades of controversy, Norrbotten got its arms, thus recognized as a real province.

History

During the

swedish people have lived near the coast as early as 1335 as documented in the testament of Svenalde from Rutvik. From the Middle Ages and forward, the Swedish kings tried hard to colonise and Christianize the area. Settlers from the then eastern half of Sweden, Finland – the most important of which were known as Birkarls ~ controlled the trade and even the taxing on the area long into the 16th century.[2] From the mid-16th century, the area was more firmly tied to Sweden.[clarification needed] An important sign of Swedish control was the large Nederluleå stone church
from 1492. Still today, Finnish and Sami minorities live in Norrbotten and they have kept their culture and language.

Historically, Västerbotten was the denomination for northern Sweden, together with the Lappland areas. The Eastern Botten or Ostrobothnia was in the Finnish side.

Cultural identification in Sweden is closely related to the historical provinces, and the people in Norrbotten live in this sense in Northern Västerbotten, or Norra Västerbotten. In order not to be confused with people from Southern Västerbotten, i.e. the coastal region of Västerbotten County, they started to identify themselves with the county rather than with the historical province.

Norrbotten had gradually become synonymous with the area that was previously referred to as northern Västerbotten. It started to evolve as a separate province. During the 20th century it got all of the symbols (animals, flowers etc.) which are assigned to the other provinces of Sweden. But there was still some resistance to the idea of Norrbotten being a province.

As recently as 1995, after decades of debate, Norrbotten was granted a coat of arms, thus at last being fully recognized as one of provinces of Sweden.[clarification needed]

The coat of arms symbolizes the four large rivers in Norrbotten that drain into the Gulf of Bothnia: Torne River, Kalix River, Lule River and Pite River.

The summers can bring surprisingly warm temperatures for such northerly latitudes, and Norrbotten holds the all-time high temperature record for the entire Norrland at 37 °C (98 °F).

Population

As of 31 December 2016, the population is 195,024,[1] distributed over 26,671 km2, which gives a density of 7.3 inhabitants/km2.

Culture

Norrbotten has around 8,000 ancient remains. Languages spoken in the province include

Sami. Some Meänkieli speakers have gradually been considering themselves part of the Kven people
, which supposedly arrived to the area much earlier than the Swedish settlers.

The Church Village of

Gammelstad outside Luleå has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site
.

Sports

Football in the province (and Norrbotten County as a whole) is administered by

Luleå BBK
women's team.

References

  1. ^ a b "Folkmängd i landskapen den 31 december 2016" (in Swedish). Statistics Sweden. 21 March 2017. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
  2. ^ Vahtola, Jouko. Tornionlaakson historia I. Birkarlit, 'pirkkalaiset'. Malungs boktryckeri AB. Malung, Sweden. 1991.

External links

67°00′N 20°00′E / 67.000°N 20.000°E / 67.000; 20.000

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