| Malmöhus County Malmöhus län | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| County ofSweden | |||||||
| 1719–1996 | |||||||
 Flag  Coat of arms | |||||||
 | |||||||
| Capital | Malmö | ||||||
| History | |||||||
• Established | 1719 | ||||||
• Disestablished | 1996 | ||||||
| |||||||
Malmöhus County (Swedish:Malmöhus län) was acounty ofSweden from 1719 to 1996. On 1 January 1997 it was merged withKristianstad County to formSkåne County. It had been named afterMalmöhus, a castle inMalmö, which was also where thegovernor originally lived.
Malmöhus County was part ofSkåne province which was controlled byDenmark until 1658.[1] In 1657,Denmark declared war onSweden, while Sweden was at war withRussia,Poland, andAustria. Swedish forces were sent immediately from Poland to Denmark. Denmark was defeated which required the transfer ofSkåne, Halland, Blekinge and Bohuslän provinces to Sweden[2] under theTreaty of Roskilde.[3] Denmark attempted to regain the lost provinces until 1710, but was unsuccessful.[4]
Malmöhus County was part ofScania province situated on a peninsula that projects into theBaltic Sea[5] on the northeast of theÖresund straits.[6] The geography differs in many aspects from the rest ofSweden. The coastal regions typically have flat sandy beaches, while inland areas have ridges of wooded hills and fields of rich fertile soil, which were left behind from the glacial age.[7]Skåne province is called the granary ofSweden due to its rich fertile soil.[8]
Until the1991 election, Malmöhus County had twoRiksdag constituencies, while the current area has been divided into three. In the Malmöhus timeframe, the four cities ofHelsingborg,Landskrona,Lund andMalmö formed a four-city constituency, while the rural areas formed the Malmöhus constituency. In1994, theMalmö constituency was formed and the three other cities were divided into north-south redrawn boundaries. After the merger with Kristianstad County, these constituencies have been known asSkåne Southern andSkåne Western.
