Talk:Dalhem, Gotland

Eh?

The lede says that a socken is not to be confused with a parish, But the socken article gives every impression that a socken is in fact very much like a parish, and in the old days the terms were essentially synonymous. Now I'm more confused than before I started reading. Is the socken of Dalhem not based around a church? I wonder if someone could explain, please. Cheers, >MinorProphet (talk) 14:31, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

@MinorProphet: The sockens of Sweden are not that easy to understand intuitively for foreigners. The difference between a socken and parish is long and complicated. The easiest way to understand this is that today, the socken is the civil administrative way of referring to an area. It is not connected to the church or any religious organisation. A parish is an area defined by the Church of Sweden.

In many places in Sweden, socken, parish and district are ways of describing the same patch of land, or they overlap each other. It's all bureaucracy and administration about counting people, collecting taxes and fees. As you can see in this article, Dalhem socken belongs to a joint parish with other sockens. On Gotland, things are further complicated because the name of a socken is often the same as the name of the main village in the socken, usually the village around the church. Dalhem socken is the land around Dalhem church and in the old days it was also a parish, but because so few people live permanently out in the Gotland countryside, church administrations have bunched up former smaller parishes into joint parishes. So there can be several church buildings and sockens in modern parishes. --cart-Talk 15:59, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

W.carter, thanks for your clear explanation which has cleared up my confusion Cheers, >MinorProphet (talk) 03:01, 14 January 2021 (UTC)