Falun

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For the spiritual practice, see Falun Gong

Falun is a city in central Sweden, in the province of Dalarna at 60°36′N 15°37′E. The town has about 35,000 inhabitants. Together with the surrounding area, the Falun Municipality has 55,000 inhabitants, and is the administrative capital of the Dalarna County.

Together with Borlänge Municipality, Falun forms a metropolitan area with close to 100,000 inhabitants. Falun is still today an important service and industrial city even though the mine (since 1992) is closed.

1 History
2 Today
3 Natives from Falun
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

The town of Falun is known to have existed in the 14th century as a market place for the surrounding lands. Mining for copper had been a local business since the mid-1200's and the organisation for the extracting of copper and gold from the Great Copper Mountain (Stora Kopparberg) is believed to be the oldest still existing enterprise in the world, proved active since 1347. However one has to remember that an enterprise at that time was nothing more of a cooperation among the owners each contributing with a share of money for constructions, tool, etc. necessary to run the organisation. And depending on the contribution they could utilise the facilities and share the profit equal to the relative share they contributed with.

The city of Falun received its privileges in 1641. By then Falun was already one of the largest cities in Sweden.

Falun is located in the Bergslagen district, and the mining area of the Great Copper Mountain in Falun has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Stora Kopparberg (Great Copper Mountain), which also was the name of the mining company of Falun, is today a part of Stora Enso.

[edit] Today

For education, the city holds part of the University College of Dalarna (Högskolan Dalarna).

In sports, Falun hosts the annual Swedish Ski Games at its skiing arena Lugnet. The city's most successful sport team is the bandy team Falu BS which has played in the Swedish top division for many years. Also, IBF Falun, the floorball team, have been very successful on both the male and female side.

The city lost out to Calgary in 1981 for the 1988 Olympic Games. Again, Falun applied for the 1992 Olympic Winter Games but lost out to Albertville France (1992 Winter Olympics). The city lost despite the best efforts of one of ABBA's singers who recorded a single in support of the bid.

Iron and Copper byproducts from the mine are still used as a paint ingredient, in the production of the nationally well known and culturally important Falu Red paint, particularly used for wooden houses.

Image:Stora stöten.jpg