Karlskoga Municipality

Infobox_Kommun2
fullname=Karlskoga kommun


county=Örebro County
province=Värmland and Närke
capital=Karlskoga


arearank=181st
area=513.22
arealand=470.68
populationrank=81st
population=29,988
densityrank=81th
populationdensity=63.7
website=http://www.karlskoga.se/
footnotes=Area & population from SCB as of December 31, 2007

Karlskoga Municipality ("Karlskoga kommun") is a municipality in Örebro County in central Sweden. Its seat is located in the city of Karlskoga.

Karlskoga was formed as rural municipality when the first Swedish local government acts came into force in 1863. In 1925 the southern part was detached, forming Degerfors Municipality. In 1940 the whole municipality, including its non-urban areas, got the title of a city. These titles were abolished in 1971.

Geography

Karlskoga is part of a traditionally forest and mountain covered region, in Örebro County.

Such areas have traditionally been financially poor. This led to a significant Swedish emigration to North America from the district in the latter half of the 19th century. Stockholm, Wisconsin was for instance founded in 1854 by immigrants from Karlskoga.

History

For centuries, Karlskoga was a small forest and mining community, not a parish of its own. The parish was established in 1586 and a wooden church was built. In the 17th century fourteen small iron works and eight waterdriven hammers for bar iron were established. Most of these were still operating in the 1860s, but the dominating iron works was the one in nearby Bofors. In 1871, Bofors produced 6,124 metric tons of iron, more than any other plant in Sweden. In 1882, Karlskoga parish/municipality ("socken") had 11,184 inhabitants.

Industry

Bofors was incorporated in 1873 and has since the 1880s been specializing in the lucrative manufacture of cannon. Karlskoga has spent most of the 20th century as a growing company town to this cannon manufacturer. Only with the demilitarization in the most recent decades has this started to be a problem for the town. There were 8,500 workers in Bofors in 1980, but the number had decreased to 2,600 in 1998.

Twin towns

Karlskoga's nine twin towns with the year of its establishing:

#(1950) Riihimäki, Finland flagicon|Finland
#(1957) Fredrikstad, Norway flagicon|Norway
#(1963) Aalborg, Denmark flagicon|Denmark
#(1970) Husavik, Iceland flagicon|Iceland
#(1973) Wheaton, Illinois, United States of America flagicon|USA
#(1979) Sanremo, Italy flagicon|Italy
#(1996) Narva, Estonia flagicon|Estonia
#(1997) Olaine, Latvia flagicon|Latvia
#(2003) Ivangorod, Russia flagicon|Russia

ee also

*Karlskoga Mountain District

External links

* [http://www.karlskoga.se/ Karlskoga Municipality] - Official site
* [http://www.bofors.se/ Bofors]
* [http://www.nobels-bjorkborn.t.se/ Nobel Museum]