Pedersöre

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Pedersöre is a municipality on Finland’s west coast in Ostrobothnia, along the Gulf of Bothnia. It covers about 826 square kilometres (roughly 794 km2 of land and 32 km2 of water) and has around 11,000 residents (the surrounding Jakobstad sub-region has about 51,000). The population density is about 14 people per square kilometre.

The administrative centre is Bennäs, and the municipality includes several villages such as Kållby, Edsevö, Esse, Ytteresse and Purmo. Pedersöre borders Evijärvi, Kauhava, Kronoby, Larsmo, Jakobstad and Nykarleby.

Pedersöre is bilingual, with Finnish and Swedish as official languages. About 88% of residents speak Swedish, around 8% Finnish, and the rest speak other languages. The area was first mentioned in 1348 in a royal trade statute. Esse and Purmo separated from Pedersöre in 1865 and rejoined in 1977. Traditional industries have been agriculture and shipbuilding.