Sidensjö
Encyclopedia
Sidensjö 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...

 situated in Örnsköldsvik Municipality
Örnsköldsvik Municipality
Örnsköldsvik Municipality is one of Sweden's 290 municipalities, in Västernorrland County in northern Sweden. Its seat is in the town Örnsköldsvik...

, Västernorrland County
Västernorrland County
Västernorrland County is a county or län in the north of Sweden. It is bordered by the counties of Gävleborg, Jämtland, Västerbotten and the Gulf of Bothnia.- Province :...

, 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 399 inhabitants in 2005. It is also a parish in the Nätra Court District.

History

In 1915 the parish comprised 39,416 hectares. By that time Sidensjö was a church district in the Diocese of Härnösand and the northwest deanery of Ångermanland. The parish of Sidensjö today includes 33 smaller villages and covers an area of 389 square kilometres.

On January 1 1952 a joint municipality was formed from the parishes of Sidensjö and Nätra. It was called Nätra municipality and was included into the Örnsköldsvik municipality in 1971.

Sidensjö is situated in a place of great natural beauty by Lake Bysjön, 23 kilometres west of Örnsköldsvik in Ångermanland. Sidensjö houses 1,191 inhabitants (2004). At the beginning of the 1900s the number of inhabitants was as high as 2500. In the centre of Sidensjö are Sidensjöskolan (grades 1-6 and preschool), Sidensjö Sparbank (a free-standing Swedbank bank), a grocery store, an outdoor ice hockey rink, the Sidensjö IK football pitches and the service house Fyrklövern with an old people’s home and nursery school.

Among the things worth seeing is the Sidensjö church, which was built in the 14th century and with that is one of the oldest in the Örnsköldsvik municipality. The church foundation was renovated in the early 1900s and many skeletons were uncovered below the church floor. Among the people buried was an embalmed 19th century priest and in the sacristy a young woman was found.

Just southeast of the church along road 908 towards Bjästa is the Sidensjö Village Hall where a café is open during summer. Next to the church is a hydroelectric power station that extracts energy from the Nätraån, a river with countless bends and sandbanks that is a popular place for canoe paddling. A popular tourist attraction is the “Bywatch” beach on the eastern shore of lake Bysjön along road 935 towards Örnsköldsvik, where there is a bridge, volleyball net and during summer a swim school.

Sidensjö has many active organizations and the biggest ones are IOGT-NTO
IOGT-NTO
IOGT-NTO is a Swedish temperance movement, the Swedish branch of IOGT International. IOGT-NTO has about 45,000 members. IOGT-NTO has a junior organisation, Junis....

 (Swedish temperance organisation) and Sidensjö IK. Sidensjö IK is divided into several sections where the biggest ones are orienteering, cross-country skiing and football. In 1994 Sidensjö IK was responsible for organizing the first leg of the great orienteering competition called 'O-ringen 5-dagars'. The club was also the organizer of ‘Natt-SM in orienteering’ in 2004. During the 1980s Sidensjö had a women's football team participating in the Damallsvenskan national football league. The men’s team is, as of season 2007/2008, residing in Division 5. Youth activity has always been an important and major part in the club and this work has produced a number of players who now play in Division 2 Norrland.

In November 2003 Skanova
Skanova
Skanova is a Swedish brand of TeliaSonera, previously operating as a subsidiary, Skanova AB. It sells wholesale network capacity to telephony and broadband operators and service providers, who compete with TeliaSonera's own Swedish consumer brand Telia....

 installed ADSL in the Sidensjö telephone switch and is now available to most inhabitants through various ISPs.
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