Vilhelmina Municipality (; sma, Vualtjeren tjïelte) 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 ...

Västerbotten County Västerbotten County ( sv, Västerbottens län) is a county or ''län'' in the north of Sweden. It shares the borders with the counties of Västernorrland, Jämtland, and Norrbotten, as well as the Norwegian county of Nordland and the Gulf of Bot ...

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 ...

. 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

Vilhelmina Vilhelmina ( sma, Vualtjere) is a locality and the seat of Vilhelmina Municipality in Västerbotten County, province of Lapland, Sweden with 3,657 inhabitants in 2010. Climate Vilhelmina has a subarctic climate that is less severe than typical ...

History

In 1804 the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

of Volgsjö was renamed Vilhelmina in honour of Queen Frederica Dorothea Wilhelmina of Sweden. In 1947 the

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localities (Australia), in which a locality is a geographic subdivis ...

Vilhelmina was detached from the rural municipality with the same name, forming the market town (''

köping ''Köping'' was a Swedish denomination for a market town since the Middle Ages, derived from the Old Norse word ''kaupang''. The designation was officially abolished with the municipal reform of 1971, when Sweden was subdivided into the Munici ...

'') of Vilhelmina. The two entities were reunited in 1965.

Geography

Like the rest of northern Sweden (''

Norrland Norrland (, "Northland", originally ''Norrlanden'' or "the Northlands") is the northernmost, largest and least populated of the three traditional lands of Sweden, consisting of nine provinces. Although Norrland does not serve any administr ...

''), it is scarcely populated due to its inhospitable conditions and cold climate, but is superb for those who like wildlife and untouched nature. The village of Malgovik, about 20 km north of Vilhelmina, holds the record for the lowest temperature ever recorded in Sweden. It was set on December 13, 1941, when the temperature dropped down to -53 °C.

Localities

There is only one

(or urban area) in Vilhelmina Municipality:Statistics Sweden as of December 31, 2005
/ref>

Culture

Every July the town of Vilhelmina holds a festival called ''Hembygdsdagarna Vilhelmina''. In addition to popular and folk music performances, tradition holds that a local engaged couple is selected each year to get married during the festival. The bride and groom lead a parade of fiddlers and other traditionally dressed Swedes through town to the church where the marriage is performed in front of all who wish to attend. They are not always able to find a couple willing to get married, however, so some years they hold the parade without an engaged couple, and hold a public church service instead of a wedding.

References

External links

Vilhelmina Municipality
- Official site

from

Nordisk familjebok ''Nordisk familjebok'' (, "Nordic Family Book") is a Swedish encyclopedia that was published in print from between 1876 and 1993, and that is now fully available in digital form via Project Runeberg at Linköping University. Despite their consi ...

, 1921
''Vilhelmina – An Adventure''
- Tourism

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

file
Live webcam in Vilhelmina
{{authority control Municipalities of Västerbotten County