Åsele Municipality () is a

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

Västerbotten County Västerbotten County (), sometimes called Westrobothnia, 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 ...

in northern Sweden. Its

seat A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but may also refer to concentrations of power in a wider sense (i.e " seat (legal entity)"). See disambiguation. Types of seat The ...

is located in the town of

Åsele Åsele () is a locality and the seat of Åsele Municipality in Västerbotten County, province of Lapland, Sweden with 1,798 inhabitants in 2010. Its elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height ab ...

. It is located in the southernmost fringe of Lapland.

History

The first Swedish settlement in Åsele Municipality (it was already inhabited by 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 ...

) was in Gafsele south of Åsele. The settlers were Nils Andersson and his wife Brita. They came from Finland in 1674, trying to avoid the war with Russia. Fredrika is a

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

in the municipality. It was created in 1799 and named in honour of Queen Frederica Dorothea Wilhelmina of Sweden. Other nearby parishes were named Dorotea and

Vilhelmina Vilhelmina ( Southern Sami: ''Vualtjere'') is a locality and the central town of Vilhelmina Municipality in Västerbotten County, in the province of Lapland, Sweden with 3,657 inhabitants in 2010. Vilhelmina is situated by Lake Volgsjön in the ...

, but Åsele refused to take any of these names, as they were proud of themselves and the town. In 1974 the former 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 Munic ...

'') Åsele (1959-1970) was amalgamated with Dorotea and Fredrika. In 1980 the Dorotea part was detached, forming a new

Dorotea Municipality Dorotea Municipality (; ) is a municipality in Västerbotten County in northern Sweden. Its seat is located in Dorotea. When the first local government acts were implemented in Sweden in 1863 Dorotea parish was made a rural municipality. In 19 ...

Geography

Geographically, the

Ångerman River __NOTOC__ The Ångerman or Angerman () is one of Sweden's longest rivers with a total length of . It also has the third largest flow rate, after the Göta and Lule. Name The name was formerly written Ångermann or Angermann. The name is derived fr ...

flows from Vilhelmina through Åsele Municipality, and many electric power stations are built around it. The town Åsele is located in the middle of the municipality. It has a wooden church, a small historical (open-air) museum, and a nine-hole golf course.

Localities

There are two

localities 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 ...

(or urban areas) in Åsele Municipality: The municipal seat in bold

Demographics

This is a demographic table based on Åsele Municipality's electoral districts in the

2022 Swedish general election General elections were held in Sweden on 11 September 2022 to elect the 349 members of the Riksdag who in turn elected the Prime Minister of Sweden. Under the constitution, regional and municipal elections were also held on the same day. The pr ...

sourced from SVT's election platform, in turn taken from SCB official statistics. In total there were 2,803 residents, including 2,126 Swedish citizens of voting age. 54.9% voted for the left coalition and 43.8% for the right coalition. Indicators are in percentage points except population totals and income.

Elections

Riksdag

These are the results of the elections to the

Riksdag The Riksdag ( , ; also or , ) is the parliament and the parliamentary sovereignty, supreme decision-making body of the Kingdom of Sweden. Since 1971, the Riksdag has been a unicameral parliament with 349 members (), elected proportional rep ...

for Åsele Municipality since the 1972 municipal reform. SCB did not publish the party's results for the

Sweden Democrats The Sweden Democrats ( , SD ) is a Nationalism, nationalist and Right-wing populism, right-wing populist political party in Sweden founded in 1988. As of 2024, it is the largest member of Sweden's Right-wing politics, right-wing bloc and the sec ...

between 1988 and 1998 because of the party's small size nationally. 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.

Other

The municipality has recently received some recognition as the future site of Europe's largest

Thai Buddhist Buddhism in Thailand is largely of the Theravada school, which is followed by roughly 93.4 percent of the population. Thailand has the second largest Buddhist population in the world, after China, with approximately 64 million Buddhists. Buddh ...

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

.Fact sheet on the official site
/ref>

References

External links

Åsele Municipality
- Official site {{DEFAULTSORT:Asele Municipality Municipalities of Västerbotten County