Place talk:Sweden


Proposal for Organizing Places in Sweden [5 November 2007]

Currently there are no counties (län) under Place:Sweden. The county is today the official division of Sweden. The counties became official during the 17th century, a century when also the swedish civil registry were founded. All counties are divided in municipalities (kommun) and below theese are parishes (församling) which geographically are equal to the parishes of the former state church Svenska kyrkan.

Under Place:Sweden there are now also some dioceses in swedish called stift. Theese are the dioceses of the former state church Church of Sweden (Svenska kyrkan) and are divided in contracts (kontrakt), rectory (pastorat) och parishes (församling). Theese parishes is geographically equal to the official parishes. We should therefore not use stift as a place here.

In earlier days Sweden were divided in provinces called landskap. The provinces were divided in hundreds (härader/fjärdingar) which were divided in "socknar", which usually was the same as a single parish.

I think we should use the modern division of Sweden. Former parishes should exist with under the municipality/municipalities they today belong to. Villages should be under the parish they belong today.

We should use the official names and redirect from the english county names. Municipality names should be "municipality name without the ending 'Municipality' or the swedish 'kommun'. Parishes should be named "parish, municipality name, county name, sweden" Former parishes should be named "parish name (former parish), municipality name, county name, Sweden" Villages should be named under a parish. Urban areas should be named under a municipality. Places in urban areas under urban areas. If a parish by name and geography is equal to an urban area they could be under the same place page.

As a source for places you may use:

  • Statistics Sweden - Församlingar (parishes in Sweden and latest years changes)
  • Statistics Sweden - Län och kommuner (counties and municipalities in Sweden and latest years changes)
  • Skatteverket - Sveriges församlingar genom tiderna ('Parishes in Sweden during history of time' from the Swedish national tax board)
  • The software Rosenberg - Geografiskt statistiskt handlexikon öfver Sverige (this is geographic statistical information about Sweden from litterature written by Rosenberg and published 1882-1883, here you can find older names and get a list of villages within each parish)
  • The software Svenska ortnamn 1999 ('Swedish placenames', here you can find all kinds of todays modern places and see in what parish it belongs to)

The problem for many here would be that all above four sources is written in swedish....

Well. This is just an idea.../Sendelbach 08:42, 12 September 2007 (EDT)

Thanks so much for all your help. This sounds right, except for the former parishes. The former parish should be listed in the "previously located in" field on each page. The former parishes "type" would be "former parish." Some countries are using the English equivalents and some the native names. It depends on the knowledge of the person editing the pages. I am all for using the native names whenever possible but it could take quite a lot of effort to redirect all the pages. The system will automatically take out the word "Kommun," "District," "County," etc., so you don't need to. It's probably better to start with the places we have and fix those, then later as time permits add new places. It's probably also easier to keep whatever town names are already in the system and only change the county names to the Swedish. This is a really big job, will you fix Sweden? I don't read Swedish.--sq 21:38, 5 November 2007 (EST)