Trelleborg Municipality

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For other uses, see Trelleborg (disambiguation).

This page deals with both Trelleborg Municipality and the urban area (tätort) Trelleborg

**Trelleborg Municipality (*Kommun*)**
Skåne in Sweden Trelleborg Municipality and seat in Skåne Map outlining municipalities of Sweden	Coat of arms
	Municipal facts
	Seat	Trelleborg
	55° 22′ N 13° 10′ E
	County	Skåne County
	Province	Skåne (Scania)
	Area Rank	342 km² 220th of 290
	Population Rank (2005)	39,477 57th of 290
	Density	115/km²

Trelleborg Municipality is a municipality and city in Skåne in southernmost Sweden. It has a total population of 38,429, of which many live in rural districts and about 24,000 live in the city proper.

Trelleborg is located on the southern shore of Sweden and is the southernmost municipality in Sweden. It covers an area of 341.6 km². It boosts 35 kilometers of predomninantly sandy beach in the south, beech woods to the north, and in between one of the most fertile soils in the world.

1 History
2 Today
3 Urban area
4 External links

[edit] History

Trelleborg has been populated for at least one thousand years. In the 10th century or earlier, a Trelleborg (ring fortress) was built by Danish Vikings. It was rediscovered in the 1990's, and rebuilt, and now it hosts activities every summer.

The first written mention of Trelleborg, in the scarce Swedish medieval sources, is from 1257, when Trelleborg and the adjacent city Malmö were presented as a wedding gift from the Danish royal family to the Swedish Prince Valdemar. It was soon reconquered by the Danes, and it belonged to Denmark until 1658, when the entire district Terra Scania was lost to Sweden in a war.

In the medieval times, Trelleborg had an important part in the herring fishing. At that time, this was conducted along the entire coastal line of Sweden, as the herring shoals where of such great numbers that it has been reporter how fishermen could stand at the shore and land in fish with nets. Trelleborg became an important merchant city as merchants from Germany came to trade herring. In April 1619, the Danish King decided that one merchant city on the coastal line was sufficient and revoked Trelleborg's status as a merchant city to favour Malmö.

The old water tower in Trelleborg

It did however occur that the Trelleborgians continued with their business as a means of surviving. This was probably the start of the tradition of Trelleborgians being sly, wretched and only adhering their own rules.

Not until 1840 was Trelleborg allowed to become a merchant city, and not until 1867 it regained its rights as a city of Sweden. Mostly this was thanks to the work of a few stubborn men, who had continuously been bothering the Swedish Riksdag with these requests ever since 1658.

Until 1937, the Swedish government insisted that the name of the town was "Trälleborg", which was not appreciated by the people of the city. It was officially renamed to its old name in 1937.

[edit] Today

In the end of the 19th century, Trelleborg became an industrial town and the foundation of modern Trelleborg has largely been created by a few large companies; most notably Trelleborg Industries and the ferry company and business related to the seaport. Much of it has been the work of the influential businessman Johan Kock. Other important industries he established were Akzo Nobel Inks, manufacturing printing inks (established as Gleitzman Industries in the 1890's), and DUX, who make beds. Later in the 1950s, Perstorp (Flooring) Industries was established in Trelleborg and it manufactures a type of flooring boards and other plastic material. Trelleborg continues to be a working-class oriented city and is politically a traditional stronghold for the Swedish Social Democratic Party.

TT-Line ferry routes

It is today often visited by people travelling from Sweden to Germany because of the ferries trafficking Rostock, Sassnitz and Lübeck - Travemünde in Germany. These ferries began touring on May 1, 1897 with the Sassnitz line; the route to Travemünde was established in 1962, while the line to the former East German city Rostock was augurated after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The ferries carry both passengers on one-day journeys, cars with vacationing families, and heavy trucks on their way through Europe. In April 1917, Lenin arrived with the ferry from Sassnitz to Trelleborg on his way from exile back to Russia to lead the Revolution.

A Viking ring castle in Trelleborg, Skåne

Today Trelleborg has the second largest seaport of Sweden, trailing Gothenburg. Every year it transports more than 10 million metric tons.

This article contains content from the Owl Edition of Nordisk familjebok, a Swedish encyclopedia published between 1904-1926 now in Public Domain.