Älvsborg County () was a

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

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 ...

until 1997, when it was merged with the counties of Gothenburg & Bohus and Skaraborg to form

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 ...

. The county corresponded to the traditional province of

Dalsland Dalsland () is a Swedish traditional province, or ''landskap'', situated in Götaland in southern Sweden. Lying to the west of Lake Vänern, it is bordered by Värmland to the north, Västergötland to the southeast, Bohuslän to the west, ...

and the central part of the province of

Västergötland Västergötland (), also known as West Gothland or the Latinized version Westrogothia in older literature, is one of the 25 traditional non-administrative provinces of Sweden (''landskap'' in Swedish), situated in the southwest of Sweden. Vä ...

, and its coat of arms was created by quartering the respective arms of those provinces. Älvsborg County initially encompassed the entire western half of

, and was named after Älvsborg Castle, which is where the county administration was initially based. Älvsborg was demolished in the 1660s and the county seat moved to nearby

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

, but the county continued to bear the name Älvsborg. Under the 1658

Treaty of Roskilde The Treaty of Roskilde was negotiated at Høje Taastrup Church and was concluded on 26 February ( OS) or 8 March 1658 ( NS) during the Second Northern War between Frederick III of Denmark–Norway and Karl X Gustav of Sweden in the Danish ci ...

, the Norwegian province of

Bohuslän Bohuslän () is a Provinces of Sweden, Swedish province in Götaland, on the northernmost part of the country's west coast. It is bordered by Dalsland to the northeast, Västergötland to the southeast, the Skagerrak arm of the North Sea to the ...

was transferred to Sweden, and in 1680 it was decided to form a new county comprising Bohuslän and the western part of Västergötland, creating the new Gothenburg and Bohus County. The seat of Älvsborg County (which had become even more of a

misnomer A misnomer is a name that is incorrectly or unsuitably applied. Misnomers often arise because something was named long before its correct nature was known, or because an earlier form of something has been replaced by a later form to which the nam ...

, as the site of the former Älvsborg fortress now lay within the new Gothenburg and Bohus County) therefore had to be moved again, this time to

Vänersborg Vänersborg () is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Vänersborg Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden with 23,882 inhabitants (out of a municipal total of 39,904) Until 1997 it was the capital of Älvsborg County, which mer ...

References

Västra Götaland County Former counties of Sweden 1634 establishments in Sweden 1997 disestablishments in Sweden {{VästraGötaland-geo-stub

See also

References