Fieschertal is a village and municipality in the district of Goms in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Besides the village of Fieschertal, the municipality includes the nearby hamlets of Wichul, Zer Flie and Wirbul.
History
Fieschertal is first mentioned in 1351 as vallis de Vies.
Geography
The village of Fieschertal is located in the valley of the Wysswasser, a tributary of the Rhone that drains the Fiescher glacier. In addition to the village, the municipality includes a number of nearby hamlets, including Wichul, Zer Flie and Wirbul. However, most of the municipality's area comprises sparsely inhabited high mountain landscape and is heavily glaciated, including most of the Aletsch glacier and its tributary glaciers, together with the whole of the Fiescher glacier. The mountains of the Jungfrau, Mönch, Fiescherhorn, Agassizhorn, Finsteraarhorn, Oberaarhorn, Wasenhorn, Grunhorn, Wannenhorn, Eggishorn, Aletschhorn, Mittaghorn and Gletscherhorn are all either within or on the boundary of the municipality, as is the Märjelen lake. The Jungfraujoch, with the Top of Europe tourist attraction, lies just inside the northern boundary of the municipality, but access is exclusively from communities to the north.
Fieschertal has an area, , of . Of this area, 3.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while 2.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 0.1% is settled (buildings or roads) and 94.7% is unproductive land.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Per fess Or a rose Gules slipped and leaved Vert centered of the first and Vert on a pile chevronny Azure and Argent a pallet wavy of the last.
Demographics
Fieschertal has a population () of . , 4.9% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009) the population has changed at a rate of 7%. It has changed at a rate of 4.1% due to migration and at a rate of -1.5% due to births and deaths.
Most of the population () speaks German (251 or 98.4%) as their first language, Dutch is the second-most common (2 or 0.8%) and French and Italian are the third (1 or 0.4% each).
, the gender distribution of the population was 50.3% male and 49.7% female. The population was made up of 134 Swiss men (46.2% of the population) and 12 (4.1%) non-Swiss men. There were 133 Swiss women (45.9%) and 11 (3.8%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 157 or about 61.6% were born in Fieschertal and lived there in 2000. There were 66 or 25.9% who were born in the same canton, while 15 or 5.9% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 10 or 3.9% were born outside of Switzerland.
The age distribution of the population () is children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 25.5% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 58% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 16.5%.
, there were 116 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 115 married individuals, 22 widows or widowers and 2 individuals who are divorced.
, there were 94 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.7 persons per household. There were 23 households that consist of only one person and 10 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 95 households that answered this question, 24.2% were households made up of just one person and there were 2 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 25 married couples without children, 38 married couples with children There were 5 single parents with a child or children. There was 1 household that was made up of unrelated people and 1 household that was made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing.
there were 76 single family homes (or 57.1% of the total) out of a total of 133 inhabited buildings. There were 44 multi-family buildings (33.1%), along with 4 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (3.0%) and 9 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (6.8%).
, a total of 93 apartments (44.7% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 91 apartments (43.8%) were seasonally occupied and 24 apartments (11.5%) were empty. , the construction rate of new housing units was 3.4 new units per 1000 residents.
The historical population is given in the following chart:
Politics
In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the CVP which received 51.42% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SVP (29.67%), the SP (13.31%) and the FDP (3.46%). In the federal election, a total of 149 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 66.2%.