Jukkasjärvi
Encyclopedia
Jukkasjärvi jʊkɑsjɛrvi is a locality situated in Kiruna Municipality
Kiruna Municipality
Kiruna Municipality is a municipality in Norrbotten County in northernmost Sweden. Its seat is located in Kiruna...

, Norrbotten County
Norrbotten County
Norrbotten County is the northernmost county or län of Sweden. It borders Västerbotten County to the southwest, the Gulf of Bothnia to the southeast. It also borders the counties of Nordland and Troms in Norway to the northwest, and Lapland Province in Finland to the northeast.The name...

, 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 519 inhabitants in 2005. It is situated at 321 meters elevation.

The name is of Northern Sami
Northern Sami
Northern or North Sami is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland...

 origin, where Čohkkirasjávri means lake of assembly, as the area by the lake by which the village was founded was a Sami
Sami people
The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost...

 marketplace. The village got its first Finnish-speaking resident settlers in the 17th century, who changed the name into the more Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

-sounding Jukkasjärvi, thereby removing its meaning, although järvi (jávri in Sami) still means lake in Finnish. This was also the name used by Swedish officials.

The village is a popular tourist accommodation during the winter months and is best known for its ice hotel
Icehotel (Jukkasjärvi)
The Icehotel in the village of Jukkasjärvi, about 17 km from Kiruna, Sweden, was the world's first ice hotel. After its first opening in 1990, the hotel has been erected each year from December to April.-History:...

. The wooden church is the oldest building in the village (built around 1607/1608) and is well known for its wooden carved altar piece triptych
Triptych
A triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...

.
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