Finspång is a locality

Urban areas in Sweden

Urban area is a common English translation of the Swedish term tätort. The official term in English, used by Statistics Sweden, is, however, locality. There are 1,940 localities in Sweden . They could be compared with census-designated places in the United States.A tätort in Sweden has a minimum of...

 and the seat of Finspång Municipality

Finspång Municipality

Finspång Municipality is a municipality in Östergötland County in Sweden. Its seat is located in the town of Finspång, with some 13,000 inhabitants.-Nature:...

, Östergötland County

Östergötland County

Östergötland County is a county or län in southeastern Sweden. It borders the counties of Kalmar to the southeast, Jönköping to the southwest, Västra Götaland to the west, Örebro to the northwest, Södermanland to the northeast, and the Baltic Sea to the east.Östergötland County has a population of...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 with 12,415 inhabitants in 2005.

Overview

Finspång is a traditional industrial town. The first industries were established in 1580 when a Royal factory for cannon

Cannon

A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...

 and cannon ball

Round shot

Round shot is a solid projectile without explosive charge, fired from a cannon. As the name implies, round shot is spherical; its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the gun it is fired from.Round shot was made in early times from dressed stone, but by the 17th century, from iron...

s was chartered. The industry was to continue for 300 years under supervision of the Dutch-stemming family De Geer

De Geer

De Geer is a family of Walloon origin which became notable in Sweden and the Netherlands...

. By Louis Gerhard De Geer

Louis Gerhard De Geer

Baron Louis Gerhard De Geer of Finspång was a Swedish statesman and writer.De Geer was born at Finspång manor. He was a lawyer, and in 1855 became president of the Göta Hovrätt, or lord justice for the appellate court of Götaland. From 7 April 1858 to 3 June 1870 he was Prime Minister of Justice...

 (1622-1695), the Finspång Castle was constructed, and around it industries and an orangery

Orangery

An orangery was a building in the grounds of fashionable residences from the 17th to the 19th centuries and given a classicising architectural form. The orangery was similar to a greenhouse or conservatory...

 developed into the town Finspång. Today the two main industrial areas are those of turbines and metal processing.

Administratively Finspång remained part of the rural municipality Risinge until 1942, when it was made a market town (köping

Köping

This article deals with the Swedish denomination for a market town. For the city, see Köping, Sweden. For the municipality, see Köping Municipality....

). Since 1971 it is the seat of the enlarged Finspång Municipality

Finspång Municipality

Finspång Municipality is a municipality in Östergötland County in Sweden. Its seat is located in the town of Finspång, with some 13,000 inhabitants.-Nature:...

.

Notable people

• Dan Swanö
  Dan Swanö
  Dan-Erland Swanö is a Swedish musician who is currently the vocalist, guitarist, ex-bassist and ex-drummer for the band Nightingale as well as the Owner of Unisound but he achieved fame as the vocalist and songwriter of progressive death metal band Edge of Sanity.As a multi-instrumentalist he is...
  
  
• Pär Arvidsson
  Pär Arvidsson
  Pär Arvidsson was a butterfly swimmer from Sweden. He won the 100 m butterfly at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, after having set the world record in the same event a couple of months earlier in Austin, Texas...
  
  
• Bengt Baron
  Bengt Baron
  Bengt Baron is a former backstroke swimmer from Sweden. He won the 100 m backstroke at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, and was a member of the bronze winning team from Sweden in the 4×100 m freestyle at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. An undergraduate student from the...
  
  
• Liselotte Neuman, golfer. Winner of 25 professional golf tournaments.

External links

• Finspångs kommun - Official site