Borlänge

Story

Borlänge is a locality and the seat of Borlänge Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 41,734 inhabitants in 2010.HistoryOriginally Borlänge was the name of a tiny village, and the first historical information about it is from 1390. The village was insignificant up until about 1870. In 1875 a railway between Falun and Ludvika, via Borlänge was inaugurated and at the same time the construction of Domnarfvets Jernverk, the ironworks of neighbouring village Domnarvet, had started. Thanks to its railway station the village of Borlänge became highly important in servicing the ironworks.In 1898, Borlänge was granted privileges by the national Swedish government as a town of its own (Swedish: köping) with about 1,300 inhabitants, but still today it belongs to the Church of Sweden's regionally historically dominant parish of Stora Tuna, centered on a large medieval cathedral by that name (meaning great enclosed farmyards), now located in a rural district east of the city. In the 1900s, the Stora Kopparbergs Bergslag - the owner of the ironworks in Domnarvet at the time - built a papermill in an adjacent village to Borlänge called Kvarnsveden. Many area residents emigrated to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.