Sundsvall
Sundsvall is a
city in lower
Norrland, central
Sweden, situated in the province of
Medelpad and
Västernorrland County. It had 49,150 inhabitants in 2004 and is situated at . Administratively it is the seat of
Sundsvall Municipality, which includes the surroundings within some 40 km (except
Timrå) and has 94,014 inhabitants.
Sundsvall was chartered in
1621, has a port by the
Gulf of Bothnia, and is located 395 km north of
Stockholm. The city has burned down and been rebuilt four times. The first time, in
1721, it was set on fire by the Russian army during a war. The last fire, in
1888, was the largest in Sweden's history. It is presumed that the fire was caused by a flame from a steamship. After that fire, the city centre was rebuilt only with stone buildings. Sundsvall's centre is therefore nicknamed
Stenstaden (
the stone city).
According to one historian, Swedish industrialism started in Sundsvall when the
Tunadal sawmill bought a steam-engine driven saw in
1849. In the early
20th century Sundsvall was an even greater centre of
forestry industry in Sweden than it is today.
The first large Swedish strike was the "Sundsvall strike" in
1879. The industrial heritage makes
social democrat and socialist sympathies more prevalent in the Sundsvall region than in Sweden as a whole.
Today Sundsvall is not only dominated by the pulp and paper industry, and the aluminium production, but also by banks, insurance companies, telecommunications administration and a number of large public data processing centres such as the national social insurance board. The main campus of the newly established
Mid Sweden University is also located in the city.
Image:Sundsvall_in_Sweden_from_above.jpg|Sundsvall from aboveImage:Sundsvall in Sweden Storgatan.jpg|Main street*
Bengt Lindström (1925-), artist
*
Max Magnus Norman (1973-), artist
*
Sundsvall - Official site
*
article Sundsvall from
Nordisk Familjebok (1918)
