page_title: History of Östersund
section_title: Interwar period
hierarchical_section_title: History of Östersund / Interwar period
caption_attribution_description: Stadsbuss på Gustav III tog i Östersund. English: Scania Omni series bus. OmniLine or OmniLink.
context_page_description: Östersund is a relatively young Scandinavian city, being founded as late as 1786, after several Swedish attempts to found and charter a city in Jämtland, a previously Norwegian province.
context_section_description: Despite the great depression and several crisis resulting in a very high unemployment rate Östersund continued to grow in the interwar period. The municipal community Odenslund was incorporated into Östersund in 1918. The business world remained largely unaffected and Östersund continued being one of the least industrialized cities in Sweden. Instead Östersund continued to focus on wholesale trade and became a centre of this in northern and north central Sweden. The city's central position was strengthened when Inlandsbanan was constructed through Jämtland from the north to the south.
  During the interwar period the car and the bus became common. The first scheduled bus route was created in the 1920s between Östersund and the nearby town of Brunflo. In the next decade well over 40 bus routes were functioning in Östersund. The buses were of the skvader-type, a cross between a bus and a truck carrying both people and milk bottles. The dairy was located west of the bus square, Gustav III:s torg, at the shopping mall Kärnan's current whereabout. This square naturally become a central part of the city.
  The social life changed, Östersunds Rundradiostation started its radio broadcast in 1927 and the cinemas became an obvious entertainment. The sport received its first large facilities. In 1917 Hofvallen was inaugurated and in the 1930s a bath house, a harness racing course and the tennis hall were built.
  The Good Templar movement won the Swedish prohibition referendum of 1922 by a landslide in Jämtland County, 72.2 per cent of the population supported a prohibition (63.5 per cent of the males and 83.2 per cent of the females). No prohibition was introduced though when Sweden as a whole voted against a prohibition. Despite the massive amount of support regionally the movement began declining. The movement did, however, affect the city largely. It was like the dawn of a new age when the Good Templar house's sign was changed in 1947 into "teater" (theater) in what's now Gamla Teatern "the old theater".
caption: One of Östersund's city buses outside of the shopping mall Mittpunkten.
exif: {"Image Make": "Nokia", "Image Model": "N95", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "132", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3076", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "23183", "EXIF ExposureTime": "3/500", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:06:26 14:36:31", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:06:26 14:36:31", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "369/50", "EXIF ApertureValue": "297/100", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "28/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2592", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1944", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None"}