Alavieska (Finnish pronunciation:[ˈɑlɑˌʋie̯skɑ]) is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the province of Oulu and is part of the Northern Ostrobothniaregion. The municipality has a population of 2,431 (31 October 2024)[2] and covers an area of 253.02 square kilometres (97.69 sq mi) of which 1.66 km2 (0.64 sq mi) is water.[1] The population density is 9.67 inhabitants per square kilometre (25.0/sq mi).
The municipality is unilingually Finnish. The word Ala means "lower", while the word Vieska is supposed to mean a "shallow ford".[6]
The scythe theme of Alavieska's coat of arms refers to the extensive meadows in the municipality's territory. The coat of arms was designed by Kaj Kajander, and the Alavieska municipal council approved it at its meeting on September 20, 1960. The Ministry of the Interior approved the coat of arms for use on November 25 of the same year.[7][8]
On the 31 October 2024, the municipality has a population of 2,431 (238th largest in Finland).[2] The population density was 9.67/km2.[2] In 2020, the age structure of a population was: children (under 15 years old) — 19.3%; the working-age residents (15–64 years) — 55.8%; the elderly (65 years and older) — 24.9%.[4] The average age was 43.8, above the national average of 43.4 and regional average of 40.8.
The data refers to the conditions on 31 December of the current year according to the territorial division on 1 January 2022.
Languages
The population by language (mother tongue) on 31 December 2022. Finnish (suomi), Swedish (ruotsi) and Sami (saame) count as indigenous languages as they have official status in the country. The rest of the languages are counted as foreign. For languages with fewer than 10 speakers, the figure is hidden by Tilastokeskus due to confidentiality reasons.[11][12] Speakers of Finnish made up 99.0% of the population and speakers of Swedish made up 0.2%, while the share of speakers of foreign languages was 0.8%. Foreign nationals made up 0.6% of the total population.[13]
In 2019, out of the total population of 2,519, 1,281 people lived in the sole urban area, the Alavieska parish village, while lived 1,220 in sparsely populated areas and the coordinates of 18 people were unknown. This made Alavieska's degree of urbanization 51.2%.[14][15]
Economy
In 2018, 23.1% of the workforce of Alavieska worked in primary production (agriculture, forestry and fishing), 22.4% in secondary production (e.g. manufacturing, construction and infrastructure), and 52.9% in services. In 2019, the unemployment rate was 8.8%, and the share of pensioners in the population was 29.5%.[16]
