Giswil is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

in the canton of

Obwalden Canton of Obwalden or Obwald ( ; ; ; ) is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of seven municipalities and the seat of the government and parliament is in Sarnen. It is traditio ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

History

Giswil is first mentioned in the 11th century, as ''Kisevilare''.

Geography

The municipality is located on the southern end of

Lake Sarnen Lake Sarnen (German: ''Sarnersee'') is a lake in the Swiss canton of Obwalden. The lake is on the Sarner Aa, which flows out of the Lake Lungern, through the Lake Sarnen, and into Lake Lucerne. The municipalities of Sarnen and Sachseln are loca ...

. It consists of the village sections of Grossteil, Kleinteil, Rudenz and Diechtersmatt, as well as scattered farm houses and

hamlets A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. Sometimes a hamlet is defined f ...

. To the south-west, the municipality rises up to the summits of the Giswilerstock,

Brienzer Rothorn The Brienzer Rothorn is a mountain of the Emmental Alps, in Switzerland. With an elevation of above sea level, the Brienzer Rothorn is the highest summit of the range. To its west lies the Tannhorn, whilst to its east are Arnihaaggen, Höch G ...

Arnihaaggen The Arnihaaggen (2,216 m) is a mountain of the Emmental Alps in Switzerland. It lies to the east of the Brienzer Rothorn and to the west of the Höch Gumme. The small mountain lake of Eisee lies immediately to the north. Administratively, t ...

and

Höch Gumme The Höch Gumme (2,205 m) is a mountain of the Emmental Alps in Switzerland. It lies to the east of the Brienzer Rothorn and Arnihaaggen, and the west of the Wilerhorn and Brünig Pass. The '' Schönbüel'' cable car station (2,011 m) is on its ...

. The Glaubenbielen Pass crosses to

Sörenberg Sörenberg is a village in the Swiss Alps, located in the southern part of the canton of Lucerne. The village lies in the municipality of Flühli in the Entlebuch region, near the upper end of the Waldemme valley. Sörenberg lies at an altitude ...

in the Entlebuch region of the

canton of Lucerne The canton of Lucerne ( ; ; ; ) is a Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Switzerland. It is located in the country's central, German-speaking Switzerland, German-speaking part. The population of the canton (as of ) is . , the population included 57 ...

Giswil has an area, , of . Of this area, 35.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 53.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 2.2% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (8.7%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers , or mountains).

Demographics

Giswil has a population (as of ) of . , 8.9% of the population was made up of foreign nationals.Canton Obwalden Statistics
accessed 2 September 2009 After a period of poverty and emigration in the late 19th century, where the population stagnated at about 1600 persons, the population increased quite continuously in the 20th century. Over the past 40 years the population has increased by 38%, mainly because economic conditions in the region and public transport to Luzern have improved so that the migration balance definitely changed its sense towards immigration. Most of the population () speaks German (95.5%), with Serbo-Croatian being second most common ( 1.0%) and Portuguese being third ( 0.8%).
accessed 03-Sep-2009 the gender distribution of the population was 50.9% male and 49.1% female. there are 1,250 households in Giswil. In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 35.9% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP (26.2%), the SPS (19.4%) and the rest of the votes went to other parties (18.6%). In Giswil about 68.2% of the population (between age 25–64) have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education (either university or a ''

Fachhochschule A (; plural ), abbreviated FH, is a university of applied sciences (UAS), in other words a Hochschule, German tertiary education institution that provides professional education in many applied sciences and applied arts, such as engineering, te ...

''). Giswil has an unemployment rate of 1.24%. , there were 329 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 125 businesses involved in this sector. 335 people are employed in the

secondary sector In macroeconomics, the secondary sector of the economy is an economic sector in the three-sector theory that describes the role of manufacturing. It encompasses industries that produce a finished, usable product or are involved in constructi ...

and there are 53 businesses in this sector. 467 people are employed in the

tertiary sector The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the ...

, with 84 businesses in this sector. The historical population is given in the following table:

Transport

Giswil is served by Giswil station on the Brünig line, an inter-regional

narrow-gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curv ...

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

from

Interlaken Interlaken (; lit.: ''between lakes'') is a Swiss town and municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern. It is an important and well-known tourist destination in the Bernese Oberland region of the Swiss ...

Lucerne Lucerne ( ) or Luzern ()Other languages: ; ; ; . is a city in central Switzerland, in the Languages of Switzerland, German-speaking portion of the country. Lucerne is the capital of the canton of Lucerne and part of the Lucerne (district), di ...

. The hourly

InterRegio The InterRegio, often shortened to IR, is a train categories in Europe, train category for mainly domestic train services in use in some European countries, with Swiss Federal Railways operating the most dense network. InterRegio trains are semi ...

train between Interlaken and Lucerne stops at the station, which is also the terminus of the half-hourly

Lucerne S-Bahn The Lucerne S-Bahn () is an S-Bahn-style commuter rail network focusing on Lucerne in Central Switzerland. Opened on 12 December 2004, the network forms part of the Central Switzerland S-Bahn project (), which also includes the Zug Stadtbahn (). ...

S5 service from Lucerne. The A8 motorway passes to the south of the town, through the

Giswil Tunnel The Giswil Tunnel is a tunnel in central Switzerland. The tunnel bypasses the town of Giswil in the canton of Obwalden, and forms part of the A8 motorway (Switzerland), A8 motorway. The tunnel was completed in 2004, and is long. References

.

Sights
The main sights of Giswil are two ruins ('' Rosenberg'' and '' Rudenz''), as well as traditional farmhouses in the scattered settlement ''Grossteil''.

Weather
Giswil has an average of 144.1 days of rain per year and on average receives of
precipitation In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls from clouds due to gravitational pull. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, rain and snow mixed ("sleet" in Commonwe ...
. The wettest month is August during which time Giswil receives an average of of precipitation. During this month there is precipitation for an average of 14.4 days. The month with the most days of precipitation is June, with an average of 14.4, but with only of precipitation. The driest month of the year is January with an average of of precipitation over 14.4 days., the weather station elevation is 489 meters above sea level.

References

External links
* {{Authority control Municipalities of Obwalden