Mollösund is an old

fishing village A fishing village is a village, usually located near a fishing ground, with an economy based on catching fish and harvesting seafood. The continents and islands around the world have coastlines totalling around 356,000 kilometres (221,000 ...

and a

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality, a historical named location or place in Canada * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localitie ...

situated in

Orust Municipality Orust Municipality () is a municipality in Västra Götaland County in western Sweden. Its seat is located in the town of Henån, with an approximate population of 1,800. The municipality includes Sweden's third largest island Orust and some ...

Västra Götaland County Västra Götaland County () is a county or '' län'' on the western coast of Sweden. The county is the second most populous of Sweden's counties and it comprises 49 municipalities (''kommuner''). Its population of 1,616,000 amounts to 17% of S ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

with 236 inhabitants in 2010. It is located on the southwest tip of

in the outer

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

’s west coast. Records of permanent settlements date back to the early 16th century. The traditionally predominant catches were

herring Herring are various species of forage fish, belonging to the Order (biology), order Clupeiformes. Herring often move in large Shoaling and schooling, schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate wate ...

and the

common ling The common ling (''Molva molva''), also known as the white ling or simply the ling, is a large member of the Family (biology), family Lotidae, a group of Gadiformes, cod-like fish. It resembles the related rocklings, but it is much larger and ha ...

, used mostly to prepare the dish

lutefisk ''Lutefisk'' ( Norwegian, in Northern and parts of Central Norway, in Southern Norway; ; ; literally " lye fish") is dried whitefish, usually cod, but sometimes ling or burbot, cured in lye. It is made from aged stockfish (air-dri ...

. During the latter part of the 19th century, approximately 30

sailing ships A sailing ship is a sea-going vessel that uses sails mounted on Mast (sailing), masts to harness the power of wind and propel the vessel. There is a variety of sail plans that propel sailing ships, employing Square rig, square-rigged or Fore-an ...

berthed in Mollösund transported raw materials to and from the region, including

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

, and

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

. Commercial fishing from Mollösund has all but shut down in recent years, but preparation of lutefisk with imported products still occurs on a small scale. The area is home to approximately 277 year-round residentsTätorter; arealer, befolkning - Statistik från SCB
/ref> and is a popular tourist destination during the summer months.

References

Populated places in Orust Municipality {{VästraGötaland-geo-stub