Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and the most populous urban area in the Nordic countries. The city stretches across fourteen islands. Just outside the city and along the coast is the island chain of the Stockholm archipelago; the area has been settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC, was founded as a city in 1252 by Swedish statesman Birger Jarl. It is the capital of Stockholm County. Stockholm is the cultural, media and economic centre of Sweden; the Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the country's GDP, is among the top 10 regions in Europe by GDP per capita. It is an important global city, the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region; the city is home to some of Europe's top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and Royal Institute of Technology. It hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the city's most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited non-art museum in Scandinavia.
The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is well known for the decor of its stations. Sweden's national football arena is located north of the city centre, in Solna. Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city; the city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister; the government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, the Prime Minister's residence is adjacent at Sager House. Stockholm Palace is the official residence and principal workplace of the Swedish monarch, while Drottningholm Palace, a World Heritage Site on the outskirts of Stockholm, serves as the Royal Family's private residence. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BC, there were many people living in what is today the Stockholm area, but as temperatures dropped, inhabitants moved south.
Thousands of years as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable and the lands became fertile, people began to migrate back to the North. At the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings, they had a positive trade impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholm's location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne; the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may be connected to an old German word meaning fortification; the second part of the name means islet, is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. According to Eric Chronicles the city is said to have been founded by Birger Jarl to protect Sweden from sea invasions made by Karelians after the pillage of Sigtuna on Lake Mälaren in the summer of 1187.
Stockholm's core, the present Old Town was built on the central island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid-13th century onward. The city rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League. Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Gdańsk, Visby and Riga during this time. Between 1296 and 1478 Stockholm's City Council was made up of 24 members, half of whom were selected from the town's German-speaking burghers; the strategic and economic importance of the city made Stockholm an important factor in relations between the Danish Kings of the Kalmar Union and the national independence movement in the 15th century. The Danish King Christian II was able to enter the city in 1520. On 8 November 1520 a massacre of opposition figures called the Stockholm Bloodbath took place and set off further uprisings that led to the breakup of the Kalmar Union. With the accession of Gustav Vasa in 1523 and the establishment of a royal power, the population of Stockholm began to grow, reaching 10,000 by 1600.
The 17th century saw Sweden grow into a major European power, reflected in the development of the city of Stockholm. From 1610 to 1680 the population multiplied sixfold. In 1634, Stockholm became the official capital of the Swedish empire. Trading rules were created that gave Stockholm an essential monopoly over trade between foreign merchants and other Swedish and Scandinavian territories. In 1697, Tre Kronor was replaced by Stockholm Palace. In 1710, a plague killed about 20,000 of the population. After the end of the Great Northern War the city stagnated. Population growth halted and economic growth slowed; the city was in shock after having lost its place as the capital of a Great power. However, Stockholm maintained its role as the political centre of Sweden and continued to develop culturally under Gustav III. By the second half of the 19th century, Stockholm had regained its leading economic role. New industries emerged and Stockholm was transformed into an important trade and service centre as well as a key gateway point within Sweden.
The population grew during this time through immigration. At the end
Sweden
Sweden the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north and Finland to the east, is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund, a strait at the Swedish-Danish border. At 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the largest country in Northern Europe, the third-largest country in the European Union and the fifth largest country in Europe by area. Sweden has a total population of 10.2 million. It has a low population density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre; the highest concentration is in the southern half of the country. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats and Swedes and constituting the sea peoples known as the Norsemen. Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is forested. Sweden is part of the geographical area of Fennoscandia; the climate is in general mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence, that in spite of this still retains warm continental summers.
Today, the sovereign state of Sweden is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state, like its neighbour Norway. The capital city is Stockholm, the most populous city in the country. Legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister. Sweden is a unitary state divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. An independent Swedish state emerged during the early 12th century. After the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century killed about a third of the Scandinavian population, the Hanseatic League threatened Scandinavia's culture and languages; this led to the forming of the Scandinavian Kalmar Union in 1397, which Sweden left in 1523. When Sweden became involved in the Thirty Years War on the Reformist side, an expansion of its territories began and the Swedish Empire was formed; this became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, ending with the annexation of present-day Finland by Russia in 1809.
The last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since Sweden has been at peace, maintaining an official policy of neutrality in foreign affairs; the union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905. Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars and the Cold War, albeit Sweden has since 2009 moved towards cooperation with NATO. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995, but declined NATO membership, as well as Eurozone membership following a referendum, it is a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides universal health care and tertiary education for its citizens, it has the world's eleventh-highest per capita income and ranks in numerous metrics of national performance, including quality of life, education, protection of civil liberties, economic competitiveness, equality and human development.
The name Sweden was loaned from Dutch in the 17th century to refer to Sweden as an emerging great power. Before Sweden's imperial expansion, Early Modern English used Swedeland. Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod, which meant "people of the Swedes"; this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige means "realm of the Swedes", excluding the Geats in Götaland. Variations of the name Sweden are used in most languages, with the exception of Danish and Norwegian using Sverige, Faroese Svøríki, Icelandic Svíþjóð, the more notable exception of some Finnic languages where Ruotsi and Rootsi are used, names considered as referring to the people from the coastal areas of Roslagen, who were known as the Rus', through them etymologically related to the English name for Russia; the etymology of Swedes, thus Sweden, is not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning "one's own", referring to one's own Germanic tribe. Sweden's prehistory begins in the Allerød oscillation, a warm period around 12,000 BC, with Late Palaeolithic reindeer-hunting camps of the Bromme culture at the edge of the ice in what is now the country's southernmost province, Scania.
This period was characterised by small bands of hunter-gatherer-fishers using flint technology. Sweden is first described in a written source in Germania by Tacitus in 98 AD. In Germania 44 and 45 he mentions the Swedes as a powerful tribe with ships that had a prow at each end. Which kings ruled these Suiones is unknown, but Norse mythology presents a long line of legendary and semi-legendary kings going back to the last centuries BC; as for literacy in Sweden itself, the runic script was in use among the south Scandinavian elite by at least the 2nd century AD, but all that has come down to the present from the Roman Period is curt inscriptions on artefacts of male names, demonstrating th
Stockholm metro
The Stockholm Underground is a rapid transit system in Stockholm, Sweden. The first line opened in 1950, today the system has 100 stations in use, of which 47 are underground and 53 above ground. There are three coloured main lines on the tube maps; these do however form seven actual routes. Routes number 17, 18 and 19, 13 and 14 and 10 and 11 all go through Stockholm City Centre in a centralized metro system. All seven actual lines use The T-Centralen hub station. Apart from this central station for the metro, there exists just one other junction, the Fridhemsplan station, although both the green and red lines are mutually accessible at the Slussen and Gamla Stan stations; the underground is like the London Underground and the Paris Métro, but unlike the U-Bahn and S-Bahn in Berlin, in that it is equipped with ticket gates. Single tickets must be bought in advance, or at ticket machines that are available in all underground stations and on several tram- bus- or boat stops. Passengers can buy tickets at the ticket booth, just by the gates to the underground.
In 2017, the underground carried 353 million passengers, which corresponds to 1,2 million in a normal weekday. The 105.7-kilometre-long underground system is owned by the Stockholm County Council through the company Storstockholms Lokaltrafik. The operation is contracted to MTR Nordic since 2 November 2009; the Stockholm underground system has been called'the world's longest art gallery', with more than 90 of the network's 100 stations decorated with sculptures, rock formations, paintings, installations and reliefs by over 150 different artists. The decision to build an underground was made in 1941; the following years, in some cases earlier, some routes were built with near underground standard but operated with trams. These included Slussen -- Blåsut and Telefonplan -- Hägerstensåsen; the first part of the metro was opened on 1 October 1950, from Slussen to Hökarängen, having been converted from tram to metro operation. In 1951 a second line from Slussen to Stureby was opened. In 1952, a second system, from Hötorget to the western suburbs was opened.
In 1957, the two parts were connected via the Central station and the Old Town, forming the Green Line. During the period 1950-1960 the Green Line was extended piece by piece; the Red Line was opened in 1964, from T-Centralen over Liljeholmen ending in Fruängen and Örnsberg, both in the Southwest. It was extended piece by piece until 1978, when it reached Mörby centrum via a bridge over Stocksundet sea strait; the third and final system, the Blue Line, was opened in 1975, with two lines running northwest from the city center. As the construction requirements have become more strict over the years, newer segments have more tunnels than older, the Blue Line is all in tunnel; the latest addition to the whole network, Skarpnäck station, was opened in 1994. There are 100 stations in use in the Stockholm metro. One station, was built but never taken into use. One station has been demolished; the Bagarmossen old surface station was demolished and replaced with a new underground station, this being prior to the metro extension to the Skarpnäck metro station.
The Stockholm metro is well known for its decoration of the stations. Several of the stations are left with the bedrock exposed and unfinished, or as part of the decorations. At Rissne, an informative wall fresco about the history of Earth's civilizations runs along both sides of the platform; the following details relate to the present network. The designations "blue line", etc. have only been used since the late 1970s, only since the 1990s. They originated from the fact that the "blue line" tended to operate newer train stock painted blue, while the "green line" had older stock in the original green livery. There was never any red painted stock, but red was chosen to differentiate this line from the other two networks on route maps; the Green line has 3 routes and 49 stations: 37 above ground stations. The track is 41,256 metres long, it opened 1 October 1950. It is used by 451,000 passengers per workday or 146 million per year; the Red line has 2 routes and 36 stations: 15 above ground stations.
The track is 41,238 metres long. It opened 5 April 1964, it is used by 394,000 passengers per workday or 128 million per year. The Blue line has 20 stations: 19 subterranean and one elevated station; the track is 25,516 metres long. It opened 31 August 1975, it is used by 171,000 passengers per 55 million per year. Trains are operated with extended all night service on Fridays and Saturdays. All lines have trains every 10 minutes during daytime, reduced to every 15 minutes in early mornings and late evenings, every 30 minutes during nights. Additional trains in peak hours gives a train every 5–6 minutes on most stations, with 2–3 minutes between trains on the central parts of the network; the metro contains four interchanges and lacks any kind
Thailand
Thailand the Kingdom of Thailand and known as Siam, is a country at the centre of the Southeast Asian Indochinese peninsula composed of 76 provinces. At 513,120 km2 and over 68 million people, Thailand is the world's 50th largest country by total area and the 21st-most-populous country; the capital and largest city is a special administrative area. Thailand is bordered to the north by Myanmar and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, to the west by the Andaman Sea and the southern extremity of Myanmar, its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, Indonesia and India on the Andaman Sea to the southwest. Although nominally a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, the most recent coup in 2014 established a de facto military dictatorship. Tai peoples migrated from southwestern China to mainland Southeast Asia from the 11th century. Various Indianised kingdoms such as the Mon, the Khmer Empire and Malay states ruled the region, competing with Thai states such as Ngoenyang, the Sukhothai Kingdom, Lan Na and the Ayutthaya Kingdom, which rivaled each other.
European contact began in 1511 with a Portuguese diplomatic mission to Ayutthaya, one of the great powers in the region. Ayutthaya reached its peak during cosmopolitan Narai's reign declining thereafter until being destroyed in 1767 in a war with Burma. Taksin reunified the fragmented territory and established the short-lived Thonburi Kingdom, he was succeeded in 1782 by Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke, the first monarch of the Chakri dynasty and founder of the Rattanakosin Kingdom, which lasted into the early 20th century. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, Siam faced pressure from France and the United Kingdom, including forced concessions of territory, but it remained the only Southeast Asian country to avoid direct Western rule. Following a bloodless revolution in 1932, Siam became a constitutional monarchy and changed its official name to "Thailand". While it joined the Allies in World War I, Thailand was an Axis satellite in World War II. In the late 1950s, a military coup revived the monarchy's influential role in politics.
Thailand became a major ally of the United States and played a key anti-communist role in the region. Apart from a brief period of parliamentary democracy in the mid-1970s, Thailand has periodically alternated between democracy and military rule. In the 21st century, Thailand endured a political crisis that culminated in two coups and the establishment of its current and 20th constitution by the military junta. Thailand is a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy under a military junta. Thailand is a founding member of Association of Southeast Asian Nations and remains a major ally of the US. Despite its comparatively sporadic changes in leadership, it is considered a regional power in Southeast Asia and a middle power in global affairs. With a high level of human development, the second largest economy in Southeast Asia, the 20th largest by PPP, Thailand is classified as a newly industrialized economy. Thailand the Kingdom of Thailand known as Siam, is a country at the centre of the Indochinese peninsula in Southeast Asia.
The country has always been called Mueang Thai by its citizens. By outsiders prior to 1949, it was known by the exonym Siam; the word Siam may have originated from Pali or Sanskrit श्याम or Mon ရာမည. The names Shan and A-hom seem to be variants of the same word; the word Śyâma is not its origin, but a learned and artificial distortion. Another theory is the name derives from Chinese: "Ayutthaya emerged as a dominant centre in the late fourteenth century; the Chinese called this region Xian, which the Portuguese converted into Siam." A further possibility is that Mon-speaking peoples migrating south called themselves'syem' as do the autochthonous Mon-Khmer-speaking inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula. The signature of King Mongkut reads SPPM Mongkut Rex Siamensium, giving the name "Siam" official status until 24 June 1939 when it was changed to Thailand. Thailand was renamed to Siam from 1946 to 1948. According to George Cœdès, the word Thai means "free man" in the Thai language, "differentiating the Thai from the natives encompassed in Thai society as serfs".
A famous Thai scholar argued that Thai means "people" or "human being", since his investigation shows that in some rural areas the word "Thai" was used instead of the usual Thai word "khon" for people. According to Michel Ferlus, the ethnonyms Thai/Tai would have evolved from the etymon *kri:'human being' through the following chain: *kəri: > *kəli: > *kədi:/*kədaj > *di:/*daj > *dajA > tʰajA2 or > tajA2. Michel Ferlus' work is based on some simple rules of phonetic change observable in the Sinosphere and studied for t
Public transport in Stockholm
Public transport in Stockholm consists of bus, regional/suburban rail, light rail, tram and an archipelago boat operation in Stockholm County, Sweden. The bus and rail is organized by Storstockholms Lokaltrafik, SL, owned by the Stockholm County Council; the operation and maintenance of the public transport systems are delegated by SL to several contractors. The boat traffic is handled by Waxholmsbolaget; the airport rapid public transport systems are handled separately though, with Flygbussarna providing airport bus services, Arlanda Express an airport train service. There is a vast number of bus lines in Stockholm County. There are three different kinds of bus lines. Inner-city blue bus lines Suburban blue bus lines Service bus linesThe blue bus are in the inner city variant trunk lines traversing large parts of the Stockholm inner city, in the suburban variant acting as important feeder lines between the suburbs and public transport hubs in central Stockholm, or providing crossway connections between suburbs.
These are called blue bus lines because the buses that operate on them are painted blue, in contrast to the red color of the regular buses. The service bus lines are adapted for elderly people, are found in certain residential areas. Along some parts of these lines instead of regular bus stops there are areas where one can halt the bus just by waving at them; the Stockholm Metro consists of three groups of lines, which are each referred to as a singular line. The Stockholm metro has been called'the world's longest art gallery', with most of the network's 100 stations decorated with sculptures, paintings, installations and reliefs. There are three suburban rail systems, with eight lines. Roslagsbanan uses an 891 mm narrow gauge, the others use standard gauge. There are regional and InterCity trains going on the mainlines between Stockholm and cities outside the county; these cities include Uppsala, Gävle, Linköping, Västerås. These train are run by SJ on their own, SJ tickets or special combination tickets called TiM are valid.
The trains are run for a profit without tax support. There is one heritage tram line Djurgården line; the infrastructure is owned by SL, but the cars are owned and operated by the Swedish Tramway Society. All SL fares are valid. There are three regular light rail lines and one inner city tram line in Stockholm and only two of them and the new Tvärbanan are connected and share depot and rolling stock; the LRV used on these lines are a localized version of Bombardier's Flexity Swift. There are several Stockholm archipelago boat lines in Stockholm County, run by Waxholmsbolaget; some of them operate year around. As of August 2018 there are four water bus lines in Stockholm; the rapid public transport to and from the airports in Stockholm are handled a bit separately than the regular land based public transport as handled by SL, thus they have their own tickets and pricing structure. It is possible to take regular public transport to and from the airports, but that means one has to change between some buses or trains and the trip takes more time.
Arlanda Express provides an airport rail link service to and from the Stockholm-Arlanda Airport. Flygbussarna provides an airport bus service to and from all four airports associated with Stockholm: Stockholm-Arlanda Airport, Stockholm-Bromma Airport, Stockholm-Skavsta Airport, Stockholm-Västerås Airport. Arlanda is since 2012 served by the commuter train to Uppsala; the trip takes 38 minutes to 18 minutes to Uppsala. As of 9 January 2019 there is a supplemental fee of 120 SEK for passing through the railway station at the airport; as of March 2009, by one measure—single ticket price for a 10-kilometre journey—Stockholm has the most expensive-to-use public transport in the world. SL has two main forms of tickets. Both are used for all SL public transport within Stockholm County. Travel card — valid during a specified period of time, from 24 hours up to a year, depending on the card. Single journey ticket — valid for 75 minutes from activation, within Stockholm County. Single journey tickets are purchased with credits loaded onto an SL Access card.
In either case, the ticket is loaded onto an SL Access RFID card, scanned at the start of the first journey. Regardless of the ticket used, journeys by the Stockholm Commuter Rail Pendeltåg to Arlanda Airport, or crossing the county border to Uppsala and Knivsta, incur additional costs; as mentioned above, the additional cost for using the railway station at Arlanda airport is 120 SEK. Travelling to Uppsala or Knivsta with SL from Stockholm County requires a valid Uppsala County ticket in addition to the usual SL ticket. Note: Applies to SL Stockholm Commuter Rail train only. Other operators have their own tickets including Arlanda Express; as of 9 January 2019, the prices for the most common tickets are as follows. The discounted fare is for persons under the age of 20, or over the age of 65. In addition, there are tickets available for school students under 20 years old, as well as tickets valid both for SL and UL. With the Waxholmsbolaget archipelago boats the ticket structure is Cash ticket paid on board, price dependent on trip length 30-day period cardsOn
Solna Municipality
Solna Municipality is a municipality in Stockholm County in Sweden, located just north of the Stockholm City Centre. Its seat is located in the town of Solna, a part of the Stockholm urban area; the municipality is a part of Metropolitan Stockholm. None of the area is considered rural, unusual for Swedish municipalities, which are of mixed rural/urban character. Solna is the third smallest municipality in Sweden in terms of area. Solna borders Stockholm Municipality to the south and northwest; the boundary with Danderyd Municipality is delineated by the Stocksundet sea strait. There are two parishes in Solna Municipality: Solna. Solna is divided into eight traditional parts with no administrative functions: Bergshamra, Hagalund, Huvudsta, Järva, Råsunda and Ulriksdal; the largest districts are Råsunda and Huvudsta, with the Solna Centrum in between them. With few exceptions, Solna's built-up areas have a suburban character, but there are several large parks and Friends Arena, Sweden's new national football stadium adjacent to the Solna station of Stockholm commuter rail.
The final matches of both the 1958 FIFA World Cup and the 1995 FIFA Women's World Cup were played at Råsunda Stadium, the national football stadium from 1937 to 2012. Solna has low tax rates and has attracted a wide range of companies and authorities, making it a major place of work in Stockholm. Among the most important employers are the medical university Karolinska Institutet and the Karolinska University Hospital; the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute are located in Solna. On the 31st of December 2017 the number of people with a foreign background was 30 601, or 38.39% of the population. On the 31st of December 2002 the number of residents with a foreign background was 14 986, or 26.02% of the population. On 31 December 2017 there were 79 707 residents in Solna, of which 23 597 people were born in a country other than Sweden. Divided by country in the table below - the Nordic countries as well as the 12 most common countries of birth outside of Sweden for Swedish residents have been included, with other countries of birth bundled together by continent by Statistics Sweden.
As with all 290 municipalities of Sweden, Solna has a municipal assembly, holding 61 members elected by proportional representation for a four-year term. An executive committee is appointed by its members. 1943-1956 CA Andersson 1956-1967 KA Larsson 1968-1976 CG Eklund 1977-1982 Sune Berglund 1983-1988 Gösta Fagerberg 1989-1991 Karl Gustav Svensson 1991-1994 Anders Gustâv 1994-1998 Karl Gustav Svensson 1998-2006 Anders Gustâv 2006 Anders Ekegren 2006-2011 Lars-Erik Salminen 2011 Anders Ekegren - 8 juni-24 juli 2011-2012 Lars-Erik Salminen 2012- Pehr Granfalk =Moderate Party =Social Democratic Party =Liberal Party Solna is centrally located in Stockholm and is well served by the Stockholm public transport system with two commuter train stations and six Metro stations as well as a dense bus network run by SL. It was served by trams until 1959. Trams returned after 54 years of absence. A further extension will be opened in 2014. Skanska, NextJet, Vattenfall have their head offices in Solna. Mall of Scandinavia is located in Solna.
The head office of Scandinavian Airlines and SAS Group is located in Solna. The airline head office was located on the property of Stockholm Arlanda Airport in Sigtuna Municipality, but now it is back in Solna. Haga Park, part of the Royal National City Park, was initiated by king Gustav III, planned and carried out in the English landscaping style; the city features three of Sweden's royal palaces. Friends Arena, the Swedish national arena of association football, home of local football club AIK. Mall of Scandinavia, Scandinavia's biggest shopping mall The Solna Church was constructed in the 12th century. For defensive purposes, it was built as a round church, is one of few of that kind in Sweden; the following football clubs are located in Solna: AIK Blue Hill KF Råsunda IS Vasalunds IF Solna Gymnasium is the senior high school/sixth form college of Solna. Solna is twinned with: Gladsaxe, Denmark Ski, Norway Pirkkala, Finland Valmiera, Latvia Burbank, California, USAPartnershipsIn addition to this, Solna has two cooperating cities, Greece Bemowo, Poland Category:People from Solna Municipality Football World Cup 1958 1992 European Football Championship FIFA Women's World Cup 1995 Solna Municipality - Official site Solna Municipality - Tourist Guide in English
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina, known informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeastern Europe, located within the Balkan Peninsula. Sarajevo is largest city. Bosnia and Herzegovina is an landlocked country – it has a narrow coast at the Adriatic Sea, about 20 kilometres long surrounding the town of Neum, it is bordered by Croatia to the north and south. In the central and eastern interior of the country the geography is mountainous, in the northwest it is moderately hilly, the northeast is predominantly flatland; the inland, Bosnia, is a geographically larger region and has a moderate continental climate, with hot summers and cold and snowy winters. The southern tip, has a Mediterranean climate and plain topography. Bosnia and Herzegovina traces permanent human settlement back to the Neolithic age and after which it was populated by several Illyrian and Celtic civilizations. Culturally and the country has a rich history, having been first settled by the Slavic peoples that populate the area today from the 6th through to the 9th centuries.
In the 12th century the Banate of Bosnia was established, which evolved into the Kingdom of Bosnia in the 14th century, after which it was annexed into the Ottoman Empire, under whose rule it remained from the mid-15th to the late 19th centuries. The Ottomans brought Islam to the region, altered much of the cultural and social outlook of the country; this was followed by annexation into the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which lasted up until World War I. In the interwar period and Herzegovina was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and after World War II, it was granted full republic status in the newly formed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the republic proclaimed independence in 1992, followed by the Bosnian War, lasting until late 1995. Tourism in Bosnia and Herzegovina has grown at double digit rates in recent years. Bosnia and Herzegovina is regionally and internationally renowned for its natural environment and cultural heritage inherited from six historical civilizations, its cuisine, winter sports, its eclectic and unique music and its festivals, some of which are the largest and most prominent of their kind in Southeastern Europe.
The country is home to three main ethnic groups or constituent peoples, as specified in the constitution. Bosniaks are the largest group of the three, with Serbs second, Croats third. A native of Bosnia and Herzegovina, regardless of ethnicity, is identified in English as a Bosnian. Minorities, defined under the constitutional nomenclature "Others", include Jews, Poles and Turks. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a bicameral legislature and a three-member Presidency composed of a member of each major ethnic group. However, the central government's power is limited, as the country is decentralized and comprises two autonomous entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, with a third unit, the Brčko District, governed under local government; the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of 10 cantons. Bosnia and Herzegovina ranks in terms of human development, has an economy dominated by the industry and agriculture sectors, followed by the tourism and service sectors; the country has a social security and universal healthcare system, primary- and secondary-level education is tuition-free.
It is a member of the UN, OSCE, Council of Europe, PfP, CEFTA, a founding member of the Union for the Mediterranean upon its establishment in July 2008. The country is a potential candidate for membership to the European Union and has been a candidate for NATO membership since April 2010, when it received a Membership Action Plan; the first preserved acknowledged mention of Bosnia is in De Administrando Imperio, a politico-geographical handbook written by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII in the mid-10th century describing the "small land" of "Bosona". The name is believed to have derived from the hydronym of the river Bosna coursing through the Bosnian heartland. According to philologist Anton Mayer the name Bosna could derive from Illyrian *"Bass-an-as"), which would derive from the Proto-Indo-European root "bos" or "bogh"—meaning "the running water". According to English medievalist William Miller the Slavic settlers in Bosnia "adapted the Latin designation Basante, to their own idiom by calling the stream Bosna and themselves Bosniaks ".
The name Herzegovina originates from Bosnian magnate Stjepan Vukčić Kosača's title, "Herceg of Hum and the Coast". Hum Zahumlje, was an early medieval principality, conquered by the Bosnian Banate in the first half of the 14th century; the region was administered by the Ottomans as the Sanjak of Herzegovina within the Eyalet of Bosnia up until the formation of the short-lived Herzegovina Eyalet in the 1830s, which remerged in the 1850s, after which the entity became known as Bosnia and Herzegovina. On initial proclamation of independence in 1992, the country's official name was the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina but following the 1995 Dayton Agreement and the new constitution that accompanied it the official name was changed to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia has been inhabited by humans since at least the Neolithic age; the earliest Neolithic population became known in the Antiquity as the Illyrians. Celtic migrations in the 4th century BC were notable. Concrete historical e
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