Pajala Municipality (; fi, Pajalan kunta) is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

Norrbotten County Norrbotten County ( sv, Norrbottens län; se, Norrbottena leatna, fi, Norrbottenin lääni) is the northernmost county or '' län'' of Sweden. It is also the largest county by land area, almost a quarter of Sweden's total area. It shares border ...

in northern

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

, bordering

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. Its

seat A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but also headquarters in a wider sense. Types of seat The following are examples of different kinds of seat: * Armchair (furniture), ...

is located in the locality of

Pajala Pajala () is a locality and the seat of Pajala Municipality in Norrbotten County, Sweden, with 1,958 inhabitants in 2010. It is located in Swedish Lapland. Pajala is in the Torne Valley and was dominated by people speaking a Finnish dialect u ...

. In 1884

Tärendö Tärendö (, fit, Täräntö ) is a small locality in Norrbotten County, Sweden with 208 inhabitants in 2000. It is located at the Kalix River and the bifurcation Tärendö River. The village was probably founded around year 1620. The larges ...

was detached from Pajala Municipality, forming a municipality of its own. In 1914 Pajala Municipality was once again split when

Junosuando Junosuando () is a locality situated in Pajala Municipality Pajala Municipality (; fi, Pajalan kunta) is a municipality in Norrbotten County in northern Sweden, bordering Finland. Its seat is located in the locality of Pajala. In 1884 Tärendö ...

broke away. They were reunited in 1971, when

Korpilombolo Korpilombolo () is a locality situated in Pajala Municipality, Norrbotten County, Sweden with 529 inhabitants in 2010. The band Goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept a ...

was added as well.

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

and

Meänkieli (literally 'our language') is a group of distinct Finnish language, Finnish dialects or a Finnic languages, Finnic language spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden along the valley of the Torne River. Its status as an independent language is d ...

have the official status of being

minority languages A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2019) and ...

in the municipality.

History

Its geographical location means that Pajala Municipality has always been a natural trading place, where people from Sweden, Finland and the native

Sami people Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...

gathered. The annual Pajala

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

traces its history from the 18th century. The home of Lars Levi Læstadius, famed botanist and Christian revivalist movement founder is located in Pajala. It is the red house to the right; it is now a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

. The yellow house in the middle was used as the local Lutheran vicar's mansion from 1850 up to recent times.

Geography

The municipality is one of Sweden's largest, geographically, at around 8,000 km², or roughly the size of the historical

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

Södermanland Södermanland ( or ), locally Sörmland, sometimes referred to under its Latin form ''Sudermannia'' or ''Sudermania'', is a historical province or ''landskap'' on the south eastern coast of Sweden. It borders Östergötland, Närke, Västmanla ...

, which - compared to Pajala Municipality's population of approximately 6,500 - has more than one million inhabitants. In Pajala is also ''Jupukkamasten'', a 335 metre tall

guyed mast A guyed mast or guyed tower is a tall thin vertical structure that depends on guy lines (diagonal tensioned cables attached to the ground) for stability. The mast itself has the compressive strength to support its own weight, but does not ha ...

for FM- and TV-transmission, which together with three other guyed masts of the same height is the tallest structure in Sweden.

Localities

There are four localities (or urban areas) in Pajala Municipality: The municipal seat in

bold In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech. Methods and use The most common methods in W ...

Government and politics

Riksdag The Riksdag (, ; also sv, riksdagen or ''Sveriges riksdag'' ) is the legislature and the supreme decision-making body of Sweden. Since 1971, the Riksdag has been a unicameral legislature with 349 members (), elected proportionally and se ...

These are the results since the 1972 municipal reform.

Norrbotten Party The Norbotten Party (''Norrbottenspartiet'') was a minor, regional party in Sweden. The base of the party was in the most northern Swedish province, Norrbotten County, and in the local and regional parties, the Kiruna Party and the Norrbotten Hea ...

participated in 1994 but the results were not published by SCB due to the party's small size at the time. Blocs This lists the relative strength of the socialist and centre-right blocs since 1973, but parties not elected to the Riksdag are inserted as "other", including the Sweden Democrats results from 1988 to 2006, but also the Christian Democrats pre-1991 and the Greens in 1982, 1985 and 1991. The sources are identical to the table above. The coalition or government mandate marked in bold formed the government after the election. New Democracy got elected in 1991 but are still listed as "other" due to the short lifespan of the party. "Elected" is the total number of percentage points from the municipality that went to parties who were elected to the Riksdag. Distribution of the 33 seats in the municipal council after the 2010 election: *

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties For ...

18 * Left Party 7 *

Christian Democrats __NOTOC__ Christian democratic parties are political parties that seek to apply Christian principles to public policy. The underlying Christian democracy movement emerged in 19th-century Europe, largely under the influence of Catholic social ...

3 *

Moderate Party The Moderate Party ( sv, Moderata samlingspartiet , ; M), commonly referred to as the Moderates ( ), is a liberal-conservative political party in Sweden. The party generally supports tax cuts, the free market, civil liberties and economic liber ...

2 *Norrbottens Sjukvårdsparti 2 * Centre Party 1 Results of the

2010 Swedish general election General elections were held in Sweden on 19 September 2010 to elect the 349 members of the Riksdag. The main contenders of the election were the governing centre-right coalition the Alliance, consisting of the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, t ...

in Pajala: *

51.3% * Left Party 18.8% *

12.6% *

5.5% *

Sweden Democrats The Sweden Democrats ( sv , Sverigedemokraterna ; SD ) is a nationalist and right-wing populist political party in Sweden. As of 2022, it is the largest member of Sweden's right-wing governing bloc to which it provides confidence and supply, a ...

3.9% * Centre Party 3.2% * Liberal People's Party 2.1% *

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation ...

2.1%

Sister cities

Pajala Municipality has three

sister cities A sister city or a twin town relationship is a form of legal or social agreement between two geographically and politically distinct localities for the purpose of promoting cultural and commercial ties. While there are early examples of inter ...

:Official site
* Flag of Norway

Målselv Målselv ( sme, Málatvuomi suohkan) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Moen. The main commercial centre of the municipality is the Bardufoss area (including And ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

Kolari Kolari is a municipality of Finland at the Swedish border, which follows the Torne River, the longest free-flowing river in Europe. It is located in the region of Lapland. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of whic ...

Olenegorsk,

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

References

External links

Pajala Municipality
- Official site
World's largest sundial in Pajala
{{authority control Municipalities of Norrbotten County Meänkieli language municipalities