Östra Göinge Municipality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Östra Göinge Municipality (*Kommun*)**
Östra Göinge and Broby in Skåne Map outlining municipalities of Sweden	Coat of arms
	Municipal facts
	Seat	Broby
	56° 15´ N 14° 04´ E
	County	Skåne County
	Province	Scania
	Area Rank	434 km² 187th of 290
	Population Rank (2005)	13,978 159th of 290
	Density	32/km²

Coordinates: 56° 15´ N 14° 04´ E

Östra Göinge is a municipality in Skåne County in southern Sweden. The municipal seat is located in Broby, a town with a population of 2,000. The municipality consists of 8 smaller population centers, where approximately 80 percent of the population lives, surrounded by sparsely populated rural areas.

1 Geography
2 History
3 Industry
4 External links

[edit] Geography

Östra Göinge is part of Göingebygden, an area in northern Scania which borders the provinces Småland and Blekinge. The landscape is gently undulating and densely forested with deciduous and coniferous trees, interspersed with open areas of flat and fertile agricultural land. Even though this is a typical northern Scanian landscape, Östra Göinge's abundance of small forest tarns, winding brooks and large lakes make it similar to the province Småland as well. The large, scenic river Helgeån runs through the municipality, offering ample opportunities for fishing of pike, perch and pike-perch, as well as brown trout, eel, whitefish and chub.

[edit] History

The Snapphanar, Scanian resistance fighters of 17th century, took refuge in the forests of Östra Göinge. Considered rebels and bandits by the Swedish army, the Snapphanar were protected by the local population and their bravery is still cherished in the municipality. All of Göingebygden endured hardship and suffered devastation during the times after the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, during Scania's transition from being a Danish to becoming a Swedish ruled territory.

The dialect of Göingebygden has historically been distinguishable from the southern Scanian dialects as well as the northern Småland dialects, perhaps because the population took pride in the area's historical autonomy and resilient resistance.

The coat of arms for Östra Göinge depicts two palm branches crossing each other, a traditional symbol of peace and unity designed for and given to the area after it became Swedish. The lower part of the coat of arms depicts hammers, and was added when the municipality was joined with an adjacent municipality in 1976.

[edit] Industry

A famous, very fine-grained black diabase is mined in Östra Göinge. Because of the extremely high quality of the diabase from this area, it is in high demand worldwide and has become popular with artists all over the globe, one of the more well-known being Takashi Naraha from Japan. It is primarily used for gravestones, monuments, sculptures, and other forms of stone artworks, but also to decorate buildings. The Empire State Building is partly covered with diabase from the area and the US Marine Corps War Memorial has a foundation of diabase from Göingebygden.

Scania AB has a presence in Östra Göinge.