Grimentz is a village in the district of

Sierre Sierre (; ; ) is the capital municipality of the district of Sierre, located in the canton of Valais, Switzerland. It has a population of 18,020. Sierre is nicknamed City of the Sun () for its average of 300 days of sunshine a year. It is t ...

in the

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

canton of

Valais Valais ( , ; ), more formally, the Canton of Valais or Wallis, is one of the cantons of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of thirteen districts and its capital and largest city is Sion, Switzer ...

. An independent

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' ...

before, it merged on 1 January 2009 with neighboring Ayer,

Chandolin Chandolin is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais. An independent municipality before, it merged on 1 January 2009 with neighboring Ayer, Grimentz, Saint Jean, Saint-Luc and Vissoie to form the municipality of An ...

, Saint Jean, Saint-Luc and

Vissoie Vissoie is a village in the district of Sierre in the Swiss canton of Valais. The village became an independent municipality in 1905 when it split from the municipalities of Ayer and Grimentz. However, on 1 January 2009 it merged with neighbori ...

to form the municipality of

Anniviers Anniviers is a municipality in the district of Sierre in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It was formed through the merger of six municipalities in Val d'Anniviers: Ayer, Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint-Jean, Saint-Luc and Vissoie. The mer ...

.Amtliches Gemeindeverzeichnis der Schweiz
published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office accessed 19 July 2011

History

Grimentz is first mentioned in 1052 as ''Grimiens''. The village was formerly known by its German name ''Grimensi'', however, that name is no longer used.

Geography

Lac de Moiry is a reservoir completed 1958. Lac des Autannes is located at an elevation of . Grimentz lies at altitude above sea level. The village lies in the

Val d'Anniviers The Val d'Anniviers (old name in German ''Eifischtal'') is a Swiss Alps, Swiss Alpine Valleys of the Alps, valley, situated in the Sierre (district), district of Sierre in Valais, which extends south of the Rhône Valley, on the northern slopes of ...

in the

Pennine Alps The Pennine Alps (, , , ), sometimes referred to as the Valais Alps (which are just the Northern Swiss part of the Pennine Alps), are a mountain range in the western part of the Alps. They are located in Italy (the Aosta Valley and Piedmont) an ...

Coat of arms

The

blazon In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct an accurate image. The verb ''to blazon'' means to create such a description. The visual d ...

of the village

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the last two being outer garments), originating in Europe. The coat of arms on an escutcheon f ...

is ''Azure between two Mullets of Four Argent a semi-orb sinister of the same and on the chief of the last four Mullets of Five of the first.''

Demographics

Grimentz has a population () of 385.Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Superweb database - Gemeinde Statistics 1981-2008
accessed 19 June 2010 Most of the population () speaks

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

(373 or 92.3%) as their first language, Portuguese is the second most common (16 or 4.0%) and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

is the third (9 or 2.2%). There are 2 people who speak

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

. Of the population in the village, 229 or about 56.7% were born in Grimentz and lived there in 2000. There were 65 or 16.1% who were born in the same canton, while 52 or 12.9% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 58 or 14.4% were born outside of Switzerland. , there were 168 people who were single and never married in the village. There were 213 married individuals, 18 widows or widowers and 5 individuals who are divorced.STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 - 2000
accessed 2 February 2011 There were 49 households that consist of only one person and 14 households with five or more people. , a total of 159 apartments (15.2% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 856 apartments (81.8%) were seasonally occupied and 32 apartments (3.1%) were empty.Swiss Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB - Datenwürfel für Thema 09.2 - Gebäude und Wohnungen
accessed 28 January 2011 The historical population is given in the following chart: Colors= id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9) id:darkgrey value:gray(0.8) ImageSize = width:960 height:210 PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100 AlignBars = justify DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:410 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:80 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:16 start:0 PlotData= color:yellowgreen width:40 mark:(line,white) align:center bar:1850 from:start till:230 text:"230" bar:1860 from:start till:227 text:"227" bar:1870 from:start till:255 text:"255" bar:1880 from:start till:224 text:"224" bar:1888 from:start till:325 text:"325" bar:1900 from:start till:353 text:"353" bar:1910 from:start till:237 text:"237" bar:1920 from:start till:236 text:"236" bar:1930 from:start till:207 text:"207" bar:1941 from:start till:205 text:"205" bar:1950 from:start till:191 text:"191" bar:1960 from:start till:270 text:"270" bar:1970 from:start till:205 text:"205" bar:1980 from:start till:271 text:"271" bar:1990 from:start till:371 text:"371" bar:2000 from:start till:404 text:"404"

Politics

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the CVP which received 57.69% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SVP (13.26%), the SP (11.62%) and the FDP (10.84%). In the federal election, a total of 243 votes were cast, and the

voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of Voter registration, registered voters, Suffrage, eligible voters, or all Voti ...

was 76.2%.

Economy

There were 216 residents of the village who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 44.0% of the workforce. the total number of

full-time equivalent Full-time equivalent (FTE), or whole time equivalent (WTE), is a unit of measurement that indicates the workload of an employed person (or student) in a way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. FTE is often use ...

jobs was 229. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 10, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 63 of which 14 or (22.2%) were in manufacturing and 49 (77.8%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 156. In the tertiary sector; 30 or 19.2% were in the sale or repair of motor vehicles, 16 or 10.3% were in the movement and storage of goods, 58 or 37.2% were in a hotel or restaurant, 5 or 3.2% were the insurance or financial industry, 5 or 3.2% were technical professionals or scientists, 1 was in education.Swiss Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB Betriebszählung: Arbeitsstätten nach Gemeinde und NOGA 2008 (Abschnitte), Sektoren 1-3
accessed 28 January 2011 , there were 49 workers who commuted into the village and 29 workers who commuted away. The village is a net importer of workers, with about 1.7 workers entering the village for every one leaving.Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Statweb
accessed 24 June 2010

Religion

From the , 372 or 92.1% were

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

, while 20 or 5.0% belonged to the

Swiss Reformed Church The Protestant Church in Switzerland (PCS), formerly named Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches until 31 December 2019, is a federation of 25 member churches – 24 cantonal churches and the Evangelical-Methodist Church of Switzerland. The P ...

. Of the rest of the population, there was 1 member of an Orthodox church, and there was 1 individual who belongs to another Christian church. 9 (or about 2.23% of the population) belonged to no church, are

agnostic Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact. (page 56 in 1967 edition) It can also mean an apathy towards such religious belief and refer to ...

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

, and 1 individual (or about 0.25% of the population) did not answer the question.

Weather

Grimentz has an average of 106.7 days of rain or snow 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 Grimentz receives an average of of rain or snow. During this month there is precipitation for an average of 10.9 days. The driest month of the year is April with an average of of precipitation over 8.6 days., the Grimentz weather station elevation is 1575 meters above sea level.

Education

In Grimentz about 166 or (41.1%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 29 or (7.2%) have completed additional higher education (either

University A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

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 ...

''). Of the 29 who completed tertiary schooling, 48.3% were Swiss men, 41.4% were Swiss women. , there were 2 students in Grimentz who came from another village, while 36 residents attended schools outside the village.

References

External links

Official website
* {{authority control Former municipalities of Valais Villages in Valais Ski areas and resorts in Switzerland Anniviers