Schwyz
Schwyz is a town and the capital of the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland.
The Federal Charter of 1291 or Bundesbrief, the charter that eventually led to the foundation of Switzerland, can be seen at the Bundesbriefmuseum.
The official language of Schwyz is German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect.
Name
The earliest certain record of the name dates to 972, recorded in Medieval Latin as villa Suittes. There are a number of uncertain records dated between 924 and 960, in the form Swites and Switz. The name is recorded as Schwitz in the 13th century, and in the 17th to 18th century often as Schweitz.The name's etymology is uncertain. It was long presented as derived from the name of an eponymous founder in Swiss legend, one Suito or Switer, an explanation found in Swiss school textbooks until the first half of the 20th century. There is currently no consensus on the name's derivation. Isaac Wake, diplomat of King James VI and I in Bern, suggested in 1625 that the name originated in Sweden, among the Suecia, "who in the time of king Sigebert made a transmigration out of Suecia and planted themselves in this country". A Germanic etymology was suggested by Gatschet, deriving the name from an Old High German verb suedan "to burn". Brandstetter is critical of Gatschet's suggestion and prefers derivation from an Alemannic personal name in Svid- as it were presenting a scholarly defense of the Suito of the founding legend.
The etymology proposed for the Schweizerisches Idiotikon by Hubschmied derives the name from a Gallo-Roman * suētas, from the Gaulish or Latin word for "pig", via a Romance *suēdes " of pigs" yielding an Alemannic Swītes. Hubschmied distanced himself from this opinion in 1961, preferring an unspecified pre-Roman source.
Sonderegger revisits Gatschet's suedan "slash-and-burn" proposal, but now claims derivation from a cognate Celtic root, sveit-, Proto-Celtic sveitos with a meaning of "clearing" or similar, giving Gaulish *Svētos, Gallo-Romance *Svēdus, -is, and finally Swītes in Old High German by the 8th century.
The name Schwyz was extended to the area dominated by Schwyz, and later to the entire Old Swiss Confederacy. Other cantons tended to resent this in the 15th century, but after 1499 the term Schwyzer was widely self-adopted, out of spite so to speak, since it had been employed as a term of abuse by the Swabian side during the Swabian War. Eidgenossenschaft and Schwytzerland could be used interchangeably as country names in the 16th century.
The Swiss German pronunciation is the same for the name of the town and that of the country. The spelling of y for originates from the ligature ij in 15th-century handwriting.
History
While a few Roman era coins have been found in Schwyz, the earliest evidence of a settlement comes from the 8th century. The Alamanni cemetery at the parish church and the church itself are both from the first half of the 8th century. This first church was followed by a second ottonian church around 1000, which may have been destroyed by the 1117 Verona earthquake. In 1121 the third church building, a romanesque building, was consecrated. This was followed in the 15th century by the much larger fourth church which was destroyed, along with much of the village, by fire in 1642. The fifth church, an early baroque church was replaced because of serious structural defects by the current late baroque church which was dedicated in 1774.Because Schwyz was the capital of a canton, many of the government organizations administered both the town and the canton at the same time, and the history of the town is closely tied to the history of the canton.
According to the chronicle of Johann Stumpf from 1548, the old town originally consisted of a village square, the church and its cemetery, the town hall, the inn, the archive tower and a number of scattered wooden houses. Around 1500, to distinguish it from the Canton of Schwyz, Schwyz town was often called Kilchgassen, which meant the village around the church but not the surrounding villages. The fire of 1642, which destroyed 47 buildings in the center of the village, allowed the town to be totally rebuilt. A new, larger town square with major roads radiating out was built in front of the new church and the new city hall. The houses were rebuilt as urban townhouses and a ring of about 30 large patrician farm houses grew up surrounding the village center.
Geography
Besides the town of Schwyz, the municipality includes the settlements of Ibach, Seewen and Rickenbach. To the east, the municipality includes, or borders on, the mountains of Hochstuckli, Kleiner Mythen, Grosser Mythen, Rotenflue, and Furggelenstock. The river Muota flows out of these mountains and through the municipality on its way to Lake Lucerne. The Haggenegg Pass and Holzegg Pass both cross to Alpthal, whilst the Ibergeregg Pass crosses to Oberiberg.Schwyz has an area,, of. Of this area, 46.4% is used for agricultural purposes, while 39.1% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 8.7% is settled and the remainder is non-productive.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is ''Gules, a Confederate cross couped in the hoist argent.''Demographics
Schwyz had a population of. , 15.6% of the population were resident foreign nationals. Over the year 2010–2011 the population reduced by 0.6%. Migration accounted for −0.9%, while births and deaths accounted for 0.0%. Most of the population speaks German as their first language, Serbo-Croatian is the second most common and Italian is the third. There are 23 people who speak French and 25 people who speak Romansh., the population was 49.9% male and 50.1% female. The population was made up of 5,824 Swiss men, 1,058 non-Swiss men, 5,932 Swiss women and 988 non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 6,681 or about 48.4% were born in Schwyz and lived there in 2000. There were 2,195 or 15.9% who were born in the same canton, while 2,780 or 20.1% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 1,797 or 13.0% were born outside of Switzerland.
, children and teenagers make up 25.6% of the population, while adults make up 60.3% and seniors make up 14.1%.
, there were 6,314 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 6,305 married individuals, 722 widows or widowers and 461 individuals who are divorced.
, there were 5,250 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.5 persons per household. There were 1,582 households that consist of only one person and 536 households with five or more people. , a total of 4,968 apartments were permanently occupied, while 375 apartments were seasonally occupied and 156 apartments were empty. , the construction rate of new housing units was 4.8 new units per 1000 residents.
the average price to rent an average apartment in Schwyz was 1185.58 Swiss francs per month. The average rate for a one-room apartment was 543.08 CHF, a two-room apartment was about 904.87 CHF, a three-room apartment was about 1068.78 CHF and a six or more room apartment cost an average of 1461.34 CHF. The average apartment price in Schwyz was 106.2% of the national average of 1116 CHF. The vacancy rate for the municipality,, was 0.25%.
Historic population
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