Alavieska

Alavieska () is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the province of Oulu and is part of the Northern Ostrobothnia region. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is .

The municipality is unilingually Finnish. The word Ala means "lower", while the word Vieska is supposed to mean a "shallow ford".

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.

Geography Neighbouring municipalities are Kalajoki, Merijärvi, Oulainen and Ylivieska.

Villages In 1967, Alavieska had six legally recognized villages (henkikirjakylät):

Alavieska Eteläranta Kähtävä Somero Taluskylä Käännänkylä

Demographics Population On the , the municipality has a population of (). The population density was /km2. In 2020, the age structure of a population was: children (under 15 years old) — ; the working-age residents (15–64 years) — ; the elderly (65 years and older) — . The average age was 43.8, above the national average of 43.4 and regional average of 40.8.

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. 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.

Language Speakers in 2022 Quantity Part (%) Total population 100.0 Official languages 99.1 Finnish 98.9 Swedish 4 0.2 Foreign languages 22 0.9 Other 22 0.9+ Population by native language

Urban areas 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%.

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%. (2018 and 2019)

Notable people Pentti Kahma, discus thrower Teemu Kattilakoski, skier Rauli Pudas, pole vaulter

Alavieska

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