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Market Harborough

Market Harborough is a market town in the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England, close to the border with Northamptonshire. The population was 24,779 at the 2021 census. It is the administrative headquarters of the Harborough district.

Market Harborough was part of Rockingham Forest, a royal hunting forest used by medieval monarchs, whose boundaries stretched from Market Harborough to Stamford and included Corby, Kettering, Desborough, Rothwell, Thrapston and Oundle. The town was at a crossroads for both road and rail, but the A6 now bypasses it to the east and the A14 to the south. Market Harborough railway station is served by East Midlands Railway services on the Midland Main Line with direct services north to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield, and south to London St Pancras. Rail services to Rugby and Peterborough ended in 1966.

The steeple of St Dionysius' Church rises directly from the street, as there is no churchyard. It was constructed in grey stone in 1300 with the church itself a later building of about 1470. Next to the church stands the Old Grammar School, a small timber building dating from 1614. The ground floor is open, creating a covered market area and there is a single room on the first floor. It has become a symbol of the town. The nearby square is largely pedestrianised and surrounded by buildings of varying styles. The upper end of the High Street is wide and contains mostly unspoilt Georgian buildings.

Market Harborough has two villages within its confines: Great Bowden lies over a hill about a mile from the town centre, and Little Bowden is less than half a mile from the town centre. The three centres have largely coalesced through ribbon development and infill, although Great Bowden continues to retain a strong village identity.

Before 1066
Market Harborough was founded by the Saxons between 410 and 1066. Originally a small village, believed to have been called Hæfera-beorg (Harborough), meaning "oat hill".

1066–1799
In 1086 the Domesday Book records Bowden as a Royal Manor organised in 73 manors. The population lived in three villages, Great Bowden, Arden and Little Bowden. The Manor of Harborough is first mentioned in 1199 and 1227 when it was called "Haverberg". It is likely that Harborough was formed out of the Royal Manor with the intention of making it a place for tradesmen and a market when a new highway between Oxendon and Kibworth was established to help link Northampton and Leicester. A chapel dedicated to St Dionysius was built on the route, whilst St Mary in Arden retained Parish Church status.

A market was established by 1204 and has been held on a Tuesday ever since 1221. Eventually this market led to the modern name of Market Harborough. The tradespeople of Harborough had large tofts or farmyards at the rear of their properties where goods were made and stored. Many of these yards remain but have been subdivided down their length over the years to give frontage to the High Street.

The steeple of Harborough Church was started in 1300 and completed in 1320. It is a broach spire, which rests on the walls of the tower, and are earlier than recessed spires which rise from behind a square tower as at Great Bowden. By 1382 the village of Arden had been abandoned, although the church remained in use for some years. In 1470 the main part of Harborough Church was completed. An open stream ran down the High Street. The Town Estate was created and managed by a body of Feoffees elected by the townspeople, to help manage among other things the open fields surrounding the town, the proceeds from which were used for a variety of purposes. In 1569 the town was briefly in the news as the Privy Council debated whether a local girl, Agnes Bowker, had given birth to a cat. From 1570 the Town Estate owned several properties within the town.

Harborough figured nationally in the English Civil War in June 1645, when it became the headquarters of the King's Army. In Harborough, the King decided to confront Parliamentary forces who were camped near Naseby, but the Battle of Naseby proved a decisive victory for Parliament led by Oliver Cromwell. Harborough Chapel became a temporary prison for the captured forces. Cromwell wrote a letter from "Haverbrowe, June 14, 1645" to the Speaker of the House of Commons, William Lenthall, announcing the victory.

An independent church was established in the Harborough area following the Act of Uniformity 1662, and a meeting house was built in Bowden Lane in 1694.

During the 18th century the timber mud and thatch buildings of the town were largely replaced with brick buildings. After roads were turnpiked and regularly repaired (making wheeled traffic easier all year round) Harborough became a staging point for coach travel on the road to London from the northwest and the Midlands. In 1776 the Open Fields of Great Bowden were allotted to individual owners and fenced with hedges planted, followed by those of Little Bowden in 1780.

1800–1899
In the 19th century, the increasing level of heavy goods traffic on the turnpike roads led to complaints. A plan for a canal from Leicester to join the London to Birmingham canal was mooted but it eventually bypassed the town and a branch canal was cut from Foxton to Harborough, with wharves at Gallow Hill and Great Bowden. Harborough wharf, to the north of the town, became a distribution centre for coal and corn. A gas company was formed in 1833 to make and distribute gas. John Clarke and Sons of London built a factory for spinning worsted and later making carpets. Other industries developed were a brickworks, brewery, wheelwright/coachworks and the British Glues and Chemicals works by the Canal at Gallow Hill. In the 1830s a union of parishes around Market Harborough was formed to look after the poor and a workhouse was built in 1836 on the site of St Luke's Hospital. In 1841 Thomas Cook who was a wood turner and cabinet maker in the town organised the first group travel by rail from Leicester to Loughborough and went on to found the travel agency bearing his name.

Market Harborough became a centre for fox hunting with hounds during the 19th century, when Mr Tailby of Skeffington Hall established a hunt in southeast Leicestershire in 1856. The country between Billesdon and Harborough was considered severe, involving jumping the specially designed ox fences. His hunting diary is recognised as an important document in the history of hunting. The Hunt was renamed the Fernie after a subsequent Master.

The Grand National Hunt Steeple Chase was held to the south#west of the town in 1860, 1861 and 1863. This race and the meeting eventually developed into the Cheltenham Festival and the organisers were part of the founding of organised steeplechasing through the Grand National Hunt Committee.

The building of the Leicester–Rugby railway in 1840 had a catastrophic effect on the coaching traffic through the town. A railway did not serve the town until 1850 with a link to Rugby, but this was quickly followed by links to Leicester and London in 1857, and to Northampton in 1859.

In 1850, William Symington, a grocer in the town established a factory to make pea-flour. His brother James developed a haberdashery and stay making business and in 1876 his sons acquired the old carpet factory to make corsets. They expanded it by three additional floors in 1881 and then built a new factory opposite Church Square in 1884 which still remains today as the Council offices, library and museum. In the 1890s the Harborough Rubber Company and Looms Wooden Heels works were established. A tannery was built on land adjoining the Commons.

In 1898, Walter Haddon opened the Caxton Works type foundry on Lathkill Street. The company later diversified into the manufacture of lead acid batteries, changing its name to Tungstone Products. The factory closed in 2002.

There was a rapid expansion in the town's population from 4,400 in 1861 to 7,700 in 1901. This had been at the expense of living conditions, with severe overcrowding in the old town. Rows of cottages had been built in the yards of older houses with shared access to water and waste disposal. The Public Health Act 1875 required local authorities to implement building regulations, or byelaws, which insisted that each house should be self-contained, with its own sanitation and water. In 1883 a new system of sewers was laid, and piped water supplied from wells at Husbands Bosworth. Additional residential areas were developed – the New Harborough estate off Coventry Road and the Northampton Road estate between Nithsdale Avenue and Caxton Street.

1900–1999
In 1888 Little Bowden parish was transferred from Northamptonshire to Leicestershire and following the Local Government Act of 1894, an Urban District Council was formed for Market Harborough, covering the town and the parishes of Little and Great Bowden. Various schemes were implemented to improve the town. It acquired the gas company and built a public baths. It acquired land for the construction of Abbey Street in 1901, which removed the multi-occupied yard of the Coach and Horses Inn and enabled the building of a fire station on the new street in 1903. In the same year a new livestock market was opened between Springfield Street and the river on 12 acre of land, enabling the cattle and sheep markets to be cleared from the streets. In 1905 the council bought land at Great Bowden and Little Bowden for recreation grounds.

In 1919 there were still around 150 dwellings identified as unfit for human habitation mostly in the yards and courts of Harborough and there was an identified need for 300 new houses. Land to the north of the town was selected and a scheme for 98 homes for rent developed as the Bowden Fields Estate. Following the introduction of mortgage subsidy, over 100 private homes were built and a further development of 72 rented homes took place. By 1928 about 400 houses had been built since 1918, 164 by the Council. A major improvement took place from 1930 with the acquisition of land between Northampton Road and Farndon Road. This enabled the construction of Welland Park Road (which enabled east west traffic to bypass the town centre), provision of 100 homes for rent along Welland Park Road and 52 in Walcot Road to rehouse occupants of the old yard houses, plots for private housing, the layout of Welland Park and the construction of Welland Park School.

On 23 October 1936, the town hosted the members and entourage of the Jarrow March.

A covered market hall was opened at the western end of the Cattlemarket in 1938, replacing the market stalls on the Square on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

The post-war period saw another shortage of housing and some 600 people on the waiting list for council housing. The council developed a 100-dwelling extension to the Bowden Fields Estate by 1949 and acquired 140 acre of land to the southwest of the town to deal with the problem. A new Southern Estate was planned to accommodate 700 dwellings, shopping centre, school and recreation ground. The Council laid initial access roads named after personalities of the Battle of Naseby since these fields were crossed by both armies on 14 June 1645. A plaque now records the events and was unveiled by Mrs H.B. Lenthall on 1 February 1951 to mark the opening of the estate development. Around 150 dwellings were built for rent with the remaining plots available for private building. The final phase of development occurred in the 1980s.

In 1950 the canal basin was the venue for a week-long National Festival of Boats, the first such festival organised by the Inland Waterways Association and marking the beginning of the revival of the canal network for leisure use. The old brewery site was acquired for a bus station in 1951 and in 1958 a main car park was opened at the Commons and further car parks established in the 1960s to deal with the increasing demand. Proposals for development of an industrial estate at Riverside and Rockingham Road were approved in 1962 and the area developed during the 1960s.

Following serious flooding in the town centre on 2 July 1958, a flood relief scheme was begun, and the riverbed was straightened and deepened.

In 1968 the centre of Market Harborough was declared a conservation area. Major developments included the development of headquarters for Golden Wonder crisp makers, and the demolition of the old Symington factory in Adam and Eve Street for redevelopment as Eden Court shops and flats.

During the 1970s, draft proposals were made for an inner relief road to avoid traffic congestion in the town centre. However, it was rejected in favour of a bypass outside the town.

In 1980 the Symington's factory at Church Square was redeveloped as the District Council offices, library and museum. Plans for an A6 by-pass were approved by the Department for Transport during the 1980s and the 5 mi road costing £9.5m was opened in June 1992. In addition, proposals were made for a new east-west link road (A14) between the A1 and M1 and a route was identified 10 mi south. It was opened in summer 1991. The opening of these roads has reduced considerably the volume of heavy goods vehicles passing through the town centre.

Associated improvements to the town centre took place as part of a "By-pass Demonstration Project" completed in 1994. This involved comprehensive re-paving and new street furniture to make the centre more pedestrian friendly whilst through-traffic with a 20 mi/h speed limit.

In 1993 the former cattle market, bus station, indoor market and several properties next to the old post office and the former Peacock Hotel were re-developed to form a new pedestrianised shopping centre called St Mary's Place. This included a Sainsbury's supermarket.

2000 onwards
A footpath and cycleway alongside the canal to Foxton became part of the National Cycle Network Route 6. The path continues south following the Brampton Valley Way, a long and narrow recreation area on the route of the former railway line to Northampton.

The canal basin was restored as a boating centre called Union Wharf. This consists of workshops, restaurant, studios and flats. There are residential moorings and canal boats can be hired.

A cycle and footway along the river through the town was created called the Millennium Mile and links Welland Park with the railway station. In 2007 Welland Park was awarded Green Flag Award status and in 2008 a large new children's play area was opened.

In 2016 Welland Park Academy enrolled GCSE students and Robert Smyth Academy enrolled Year 7's.

Geography
Market Harborough is in a rural part of southeast Leicestershire, on the River Welland and close to the Northamptonshire border. The town is about 15 mi south of Leicester via the A6, 17 mi north of Northampton via the A508 and 10 mi northwest of Kettering. The town is near the A14 road running from the M1/M6 motorway Catthorpe Interchange to Felixstowe. The M1 is about 11 mi west via the A4304 road.

The Midland Main Line railway connects to London St Pancras. A branch of the Grand Union Canal terminates in the north part of the town and connects to the main canal near Foxton and the Foxton Locks. (see below)

Governance
There are two tiers of local government covering Market Harborough, at district and county level: Harborough District Council and Leicestershire County Council. The district council has its offices at the Symington Building, a former corset factory, in the town centre. The town is an unparished area and therefore has no parish council.

Administrative history
Market Harborough was historically a chapelry in the parish of Great Bowden. The chapelry became a separate civil parish in 1866. In 1879 a local government district was created covering the three parishes of Market Harborough, Great Bowden, and Little Bowden (except the hamlet of Little Oxendon from the latter parish). When elected county councils were established in 1889, local government districts were placed entirely in one county, and so the Little Bowden area of the district was transferred from Northamptonshire to Leicestershire in 1889. Local government districts were reconstituted as urban districts in 1894.

In 1946 the urban district council was gifted a large house called Brooklands at 34 Northampton Road by the Symington family, local factory owners. The building was subsequently converted to become the council's headquarters.

Market Harborough Urban District was abolished in 1974 to become part of the new Harborough District. No successor parish was created for the former urban district and so it became an unparished area. A new parish of Great Bowden was subsequently created from the unparished area in 1995. Harborough District Council continued to use the old urban district council's offices at Brooklands until 1980, when it bought the old Symington's corset factory in the town centre and converted it to become its headquarters.

Constituency
Market Harborough is represented as part of the Harborough parliamentary constituency, which includes surrounding rural areas, as well as the urban areas of Oadby, Wigston and South Wigston, and southern suburbs of Leicester.

The Old Grammar School
There is an unusual former grammar school in the town centre which stands on wooden stilts. The school room was built upon posts to allow the butter market to be held on the ground floor. The school was founded in 1607 and built in 1614, through the generosity of Robert Smyth, a poor native of the town who became Comptroller of the Lord Mayor's Court of the City of London and member of the Merchant Taylors' Company.

The subjects taught were Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and many boys were sent to Oxford and Cambridge universities. Amongst them were John Moore, who became Bishop of Norwich in 1691, and Bishop of Ely in 1707 and William Henry Bragg, Nobel Prize winner.

The grammar school has since moved sites and is now the Robert Smyth Academy for 11- to 18-year-olds. The school's coat of arms represents the City of London, a Tudor Rose and the grammar school. The school is divided into houses, known as Bragg, Logan, Moseley and Hammond.

Other landmarks

 * St Dionysius Church
 * Market Harborough Town Hall
 * The Old Fire Station, Abbey Street
 * The Harborough Museum is in part of what was once Symington's Corset Factory and shares the building with the council offices and library. The museum opened in 1983 and collects and displays objects and finds of local interest, including the Hallaton Treasure, the largest hoard of British Iron Age coins ever found.
 * St Mary in Arden Church. Established before the 13th century, the existing remains are part of the later 17th century church built on the same site.
 * St Mary's Place and the Settling Rooms. In 1993 the former cattle market, bus station, indoor market and several properties adjacent to the old post office and the Peacock Hotel were re-developed to form a new pedestrianised shopping centre called St Mary's Place.
 * Former Flour Mills, St Mary's Road

Foxton Locks
Three miles northwest of the town is Foxton Locks – ten canal locks consisting of two "staircases" each of five locks, on the Leicester line of the Grand Union Canal. It is named after the nearby village of Foxton where there is one of a very few remaining road swing bridges over the canal.

RAF Market Harborough
Royal Air Force Station Market Harborough opened in 1943 with its main tenant being the Wellington Bombers of No. 14 Operational Training Unit of RAF Bomber Command. In addition, the station hosted No. 1683 (Bomber) Defence Training Flight from February 1944 operating Hawker Hurricanes and Curtiss Tomahawks. Flying operations ceased on the station on 18 August 1945, following which it was placed on care & maintenance before being transferred to the British Army in 1948, becoming 72 Brigade Vehicle Depot. The army left the station in the late 1950s and today part of the former military site is occupied by HMP Gartree, with the rest given over to agriculture.

Gartree Prison
HM Prison Gartree is west of the town near Foxton and the site of a prisoner escape by helicopter in 1987. The prison caters for prisoners on life sentences.

Economy
There are 4,750 VAT or PAYE registered businesses in the Harborough district. Compared to the United Kingdom the Harborough district has a greater proportion of smaller organisations with fewer than 10 employees; 87.16% vs. 82.8% in the UK overall.

CDS Global have their UK office at Tower House on Sovereign Park, off the A508 – Northampton Road towards the leisure centre. They are a data management company, mostly dealing with magazine subscriptions. The company is owned by the Hearst Corporation who publish magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Esquire. Hearst Magazines UK have their UK address at the Market Harborough office. The worldwide head office is in Des Moines, Iowa, US.

Golden Wonder was based at Edinburgh House from 1970 until 2006 when it went into administration under Kroll. The former headquarters has become a Travelodge.

The Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland branch of the NFU was in the town from 1975.

Music and theatre
Market Harborough has an Orchestra and The Harborough Collective, a professional classical ensemble formed by violinist David le Page. BabyGigs is a local initiative bringing live classical music performed by professional players to babies and young children. The Great Bowden Recital Trust is a charitable music organisation.

The town's brass band, The Harborough Band, was formed in 1897 and Market Harborough Choral Society is also long established.

The town is home to The Harborough Singers, a chamber choir. Other choirs include The Dolly Mixtures, the Songbirds ladies' choir, the 90-strong choir of the Great Bowden Recital Trust and a Rock Choir.

Market Harborough Musical Theatre has been active since 1948. Its theatre is located close to St. Dionysius' Church. The theatre is also home to Parsnips Youth Theatre and Octagon films, a club where residents may view films. From 1939 until 1978 the town had a cinema known as the Ritz, now demolished and replaced with residential apartments and shops.

Live music gigs take place at a number of venues and pubs across the town including Joules Yard, The Nag's Head, the Congregational Hall and the Waterfront.

Art
An art club has existed in the town since 1963, known as the Market Harborough Art Club, meetings were at one time held on the last Friday of each month (except August and December) at the Langton Room of the Congregational Church Centre in Bowden Lane, but are currently held in the Youth Wing of the Methodist Church in Northampton Road on the first Monday of each month at 7:30pm.[11] Harborough Artists Cluster is a group of artists, photographers and makers who open their Studios every September. Arts Fresco is a free street theatre festival that, for one day every September, transforms the town centre into the biggest street arts festival in the Midlands.

In popular culture
In the 1967 film Robbery, a fictionalised dramatisation of the Great Train Robbery, the scenes at the railway bridge where the robbery took place were shot in the village of Theddingworth, five miles west of Market Harborough.

Michael Wood's six-part documentary Story of England tells the story of one place, the village of Kibworth, six miles northwest of Market Harborough. Filmed largely in around the villages of Kibworth Harcourt, Kibworth Beauchamp and Smeeton Westerby, it was first screened in 2010.

In 2015 J. K. Rowling visited the town and, writing as Robert Galbraith, set part of her third Cormoran Strike novel Career of Evil in Market Harborough.

Sport and leisure
Hockey: Market Harbrough Hockey Club (MHHC) are based in the town and participate in winter and summer leagues. The club offers competitive hockey as well as social hockey. There are three men's teams, three ladies teams, a mixed team, and a mixed U16 Badgers team.

Football: Market Harborough has two teams: Harborough Town and Borough Alliance. Both cater for a variety of ages. Harborough Town has three senior teams, including a women's team. The Northampton Road clubhouse has received Football foundation, council and Bowden's Charity grants and awards, as well as sponsorship money, for improvements. Borough Alliance FC was founded in 2003 playing at Meadowdale School before moving to Symington's recreation ground in 2007.

Squash and Racketball Club. Located in Fairfield Road, it has five courts and a bar area. In 2017 the Club was awarded National Club of the Year Award by The Squash Player Magazine.

Cricket: Market Harborough Cricket Club has two cricket teams; Market Harborough CC and Harborough South CC. The former plays in the Leicestershire Premier Cricket League.

Rugby: Market Harborough Rugby Club is near the leisure centre and until recently known as Kibworth Rugby Union Club.

Golf: Market Harborough Golf Club sits to the south of the town itself; much of the golf course crosses over into Northamptonshire and is only about a mile from the Northants village of Great Oxendon. It is an 18-hole course and was set up in 1898.

Running and Athletics: Harborough AC meets every Tuesday at 7.00pm at the Market Harborough Rugby Club. The club caters for all abilities of runner from beginner to experienced club runners and provides coaching for road, cross country and track running. The club also runs a Junior Section.

Leisure: The Market Harborough leisure centre has a swimming pool, gym, sauna, steam room and café and is open to members and non-members. There are two skateparks: one in Little Bowden and one in the grounds of the youth centre on Farndon Road.

Rail
Market Harborough railway station is on the Midland Main Line and operated by East Midlands Railway. London St Pancras is 56 minutes south. Northbound trains operate to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield.

Bus
Most bus services around the town are operated by Centrebus under contract from Leicestershire County Council, while Arriva Midlands operate route X3 into Leicester, and Stagecoach in Northamptonshire operate routes into Leicester, Kettering and Northampton. The town has its own community bus.

Media
The local newspaper, the Harborough Mail, founded in 1854, is the oldest media outlet in the area. Published every Thursday, it became part of the JPI Media Group in 2018. It covers south Leicestershire and north Northamptonshire with a mix of local news and sport. It was originally published in broadsheet format, becoming a tabloid in 1942.

Local radio stations are BBC Radio Leicester, Capital, Smooth Radio and HFM. HFM was formed in November 1994 to provide a local FM station for Market Harborough and South Leicestershire. Ofcom awarded the station a full-time licence on 15 July 2005. It is run largely by volunteers but has some freelance presenters.

Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC East and BBC East Midlands on BBC One, and ITV Anglia and ITV Central on ITV1. Television signals are received from either the Sandy Heath or Waltham TV transmitters.

Market Harborough Magazine is a glossy monthly publication covering Market Harborough and its surrounding area.

title: Market Harborough


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Thomas Duffus Hardy

Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy (22 May 1804 – 15 June 1878) was an English archivist and antiquary, who served as Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office from 1861 to 1878.

Life
Hardy was the third son of Major Thomas Bartholomew Price Hardy, from a naval family, and the older brother of William Hardy who had a parallel career as archivist. He was born on 22 May 1804 at Port Royal in Jamaica, and came to England in 1811. He entered the government service on 1 January 1819, obtaining on that date, through the influence of his uncle's brother, Samuel Lysons, a junior clerkship in the branch Record Office at the Tower of London; it was, however, from Henry Petrie (who soon after this succeeded Lysons at the Tower) that he received his education as an archivist. On Petrie's retirement, the compilation of the Monumenta Historica, published in 1848, was entrusted to him, and to this work he wrote the General Introduction. While at the Tower he also edited several publications of the Record Commission: the Close Rolls from 1204 to 1227 (1833–1844); the Patent Rolls for the reign of King John, 1201 to 1216, with an historical preface and itinerary of the king (1835); the Norman Rolls, 1200–1205 and 1417–1418 (1835); the Fine Rolls of the reign of John (1835); the Charter Rolls of the reign of John, with a descriptive introduction (1837); the Liberate Rolls for the same king's reign (1844); and the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum (1846). His proficiency in palaeographic knowledge persuaded Lord Langdale, who was Master of the Rolls in 1838 (the date of the Public Record Office Act), to offer him the post of Deputy Keeper (i.e. chief executive officer) at the new Record Office; force of ministerial pressure, however, compelled Lord Langdale ultimately to appoint Sir Francis Palgrave to the post. Hardy succeeded Palgrave as Deputy Keeper on 15 July 1861, and held the appointment to his death. As the head of his department he did much to render the records already in the custody of the Master of the Rolls accessible to the public, and muniments of three palatinates: Durham, Lancaster, and Cheshire were brought up to London and thrown open to inspection during his tenure. The appointment of the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 1869 was also largely due to his influence, and he was one of the first commissioners.

Honours
Hardy was knighted in 1869.

Personal life
Hardy was married twice: first to Frances, daughter of Captain Charles Andrews; and second to Mary Anne, daughter of Charles MacDowell. His daughter Iza Duffus Hardy (1850–1922) was also a writer. He died on 15 June 1878.

Publications
After his appointment as Deputy Keeper of the Record Office in 1861 Hardy edited, for the Rolls Series, A Descriptive Catalogue of MSS relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland (1862–71), the Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense (1873–1878), and a Syllabus in English of Rymer's Foedera (1869); and he also commenced for the same series Lestorie des Engles solum Geffrei Gaimar. Besides these works he made reports on the documents preserved at Venice relating to English history, and on the collection of papers at the Bodleian Library.

Besides his work in connection with the public records, he contributed to the controversy concerning the probable date of the Athanasian Creed. He argued in favour of the antiquity and authenticity of the manuscript of the creed formerly among the Cotton manuscripts and now in Utrecht University. In 1843, he prepared, under the title of A Catalogue of the Lords Chancellors, Keepers of the Great Seal, &c., a useful list of various legal officials in successive periods of history, and in 1852 published the life of his friend and patron, Lord Langdale.

He edited the Close Rolls, Rotuli litterarum clausarum, 1204–1227 (2 vols., 1833–1844), with an introduction entitled "A Description of the Close Rolls, with an Account of the early Courts of Law and Equity"; and the Patent Rolls, Rotuli litterarum patentium, 1201–1216 (1835), with introduction, "A Description of the Patent Rolls, to which is added an Itinerary of King John." He also edited the Rotuli de oblatis etfinibus (1835), which deal also with the time of King John; the Rotuli Normanniae, 1200–1205, and 1417–1418 (1835), containing letters and grants of the English kings concerning the duchy of Normandy; the Charter Rolls, Rotuli chartarum, 1199–1216 (1837), giving with this work an account of the structure of charters; the Liberate Rolls, Rotuli de liberate ac de misis et praestitis regnante Johanne (1844); and the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, with a translation (1846).

He wrote A Catalogue of Lords Chancellors, Keepers of the Great Seal, Masters of the Rolls and Officers of the Court of Chancery (1843); the preface to Henry Petrie's Monumenta historica Britannica (1848); and Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland (3 vols., 1862–1871).

He edited William of Malmesbury's De gestis regum anglorum (2 vols., 1840); he continued and corrected John Le Neve's Fasti ecclesiae Anglicanae (3 vols., Oxford, 1854); and with Charles Trice Martin he edited and translated L'Estorie des Engles of Geoffrey Gaimar (1888–1889). He wrote Syllabus in English of Documents in Rymer's Foedera (3 vols., 1869–1885), and gave an account of the history of the public records from 1837 to 1851 in his Memoirs of the Life of Henry, Lord Langdale (1852). Hardy took part in the controversy about the date of the Athanasian Creed, writing The Athanasian Creed in connection with the Utrecht Psalter (1872); and Further Report on the Utrecht Psalter (1874).

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title: Thomas Duffus Hardy


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Alexander Balloch Grosart

Alexander Balloch Grosart (18 June 1827 – 16 March 1899) was a Scottish clergyman and literary editor. He is chiefly remembered for reprinting much rare Elizabethan literature, a work which he undertook because of his interest in Puritan theology.

Life
The son of a building contractor, he was born at Stirling and educated at the University of Edinburgh. In 1856 he became a minister of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland at Kinross, serving the congregation known as First United Presbyterian Church. In 1865 he went to Liverpool, and three years later to Blackburn.

He resigned from the ministry in 1892, and died at Dublin.

Editorial work
Among the first writers whose works he edited were the Puritan writers, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Brooks and Herbert Palmer. Editions of Michael Bruce's Poems (1865) and Richard Gilpin's Demonologia sacra (1867) followed. In 1868 he brought out a bibliography of the writings of Richard Baxter, and from that year until 1876 he was occupied in reproducing for private subscribers the “Fuller Worthies Library,” a series of thirty-nine volumes which included the works of Thomas Fuller, Sir John Davies, Fulke Greville, Edward de Vere, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney. The last four volumes of the series were devoted to the works of many little known and otherwise inaccessible authors. He also wrote a biography of the Scottish poet, Robert Fergusson (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1898) in the “Famous Scots Series”.

His Occasional Issues of Unique and Very Rare Books (1875–1881) included among other things the Annalia Dubrensia of Robert Dover. In 1876 still another series, known as the “Chertsey Worthies Library,” was begun. It included editions of the works of Nicholas Breton, Francis Quarles, Dr Joseph Beaumont, Abraham Cowley, Henry More and John Davies of Hereford.

The two last-named series were being produced simultaneously until 1881, and no sooner had they been completed than Grosart began the “Huth Library,” so called from the bibliophile Henry Huth, who possessed the originals of many of the reprints. It included the works of Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, Gabriel Harvey, and the prose tracts of Thomas Dekker. He also edited the complete works of Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel. From the Townley Hall collection he reprinted several manuscripts and edited Sir John Eliot's works, Sir Richard Boyle's Lismore Papers, and various publications for the Chetham Society, the Camden Society and the Roxburghe Club.

Religious works

 * Jesus 'mighty to save': Isaiah lxiii.1 or, Christ for all the world, and all the world for Christ (1863)
 * Joining the Church, Or, Materials for Conversations Between a Minister and Intending Communicant (1865)
 * The Lambs All Safe: Or, the Salvation of Children (1865)

title: Alexander Balloch Grosart


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Lands of Sweden

The lands of Sweden (Sveriges landsdelar) are three traditional and historical regions of the country, each consisting of several provinces. The division into lands goes back to the foundation of modern Sweden, when Götaland, the land of the Geats, merged with Svealand, the land of the Swedes, to form the country, while Norrland and Österland (the latter now Finland) were added later. The lands have no administrative function but are still seen by many Swedes as an important part of their identity.

Subdivision

 * Götaland (Gothenland or Gothia, "Land of the Geats") is the southernmost, most densely populated part, consisting of ten provinces.
 * Svealand (Swealand, "Land of the Swedes") is the central, and smallest of the three lands, with six provinces; the administrative centre of Sweden has been situated here at least since the late Middle Ages.
 * Norrland (literally "Northland") is the northernmost, and largest, of the three lands, covering 60 percent of the total land area of Sweden, with nine provinces. The three northernmost provinces are often referred to as Övre (Upper) Norrland, while the rest of the provinces are referred to as Nedre (Lower) Norrland.

The lands have no administrative functions or coats of arms, but are in common use when referring to different parts of the country, including in all nationwide weather reports in Swedish media.

Areas and populations of the lands:

Historical lands
Sweden was historically divided into the four lands: Götaland (with exception of Scania, Blekinge, Halland and Bohuslän until the 17th century), Svealand, Norrland and Österland. Large parts of Norrland were only inhabited by the Sami people and the border towards Norway was unclear in the far north.

In the Second Treaty of Brömsebro (1645) Denmark-Norway ceded the Norwegian provinces of Jämtland and Härjedalen to Sweden. These provinces are part of Norrland. In the Treaty of Roskilde (1658), Denmark-Norway ceded Scania, Blekinge and Halland (Skåneland) and Bohuslän to Sweden. These provinces are since then part of Götaland.
 * Österland (literally Eastland) is an old name for southern Finland. The term has been obsolete since the 15th century and is virtually unknown in Sweden today. In most dictionaries, "österlandet" simply means the orient.
 * Norrland was the name for the annexed lands to the north on both sides of the Gulf of Bothnia.
 * In Sweden's prehistoric times, Sweden was largely limited to Svealand and southern Norrland, while Götaland was mentioned as a rival kingdom, and stories of Swedish-Geatish wars survive in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. Eventually, the two countries were united under one crown, though it is a matter of debate when, as historians have claimed that it happened as early as the 6th century AD and as late as the 13th century AD.

After the Finnish War (1808–1809), the eastern part of Sweden was ceded to Russia, thus becoming the Imperial Russian Grand Duchy of Finland, with Norrland divided between these two states. The Swedish portion of Norrland still represents more than half of Sweden's territory; it remains, however, sparsely populated compared to the south and middle.

title: Lands of Sweden


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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (sometimes also spelled Shaykh; also known by at least 50 pseudonyms; born 14 April 1965), often known by his initials KSM, is a Kuwaiti or Pakistani terrorist, mechanical engineer and the former Head of Propaganda for al-Qaeda. He is currently held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges. He was named as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report.

Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden's Pan-Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda, leading al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from around 1999 until late 2001. Mohammed was captured on 1 March 2003, in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi by a combined operation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Immediately after his capture, Mohammad was extraordinarily rendered to secret CIA prison sites in Afghanistan, then Poland, where he was interrogated and tortured by U.S. operatives. By December 2006, he had been transferred to military custody at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

In March 2007, after being subjected to torture during interrogations, Mohammed confessed to masterminding the 11 September attacks; the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner; the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia; the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; the murder of Daniel Pearl and various foiled attacks as well as numerous other crimes. He was charged in February 2008 with war crimes and murder by a U.S. military commission at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which could carry the death penalty if convicted. In 2012, a former military prosecutor criticized the proceedings as insupportable due to confessions gained under torture. A 2008 decision by the United States Supreme Court had also drawn into question the legality of the methods used to gain such admissions and the admissibility of such admissions as evidence in a criminal proceeding.

On 30 August 2019, a military judge set a trial date of 11 January 2021, for Mohammed's death penalty trial. His trial was further postponed on 18 December 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mohammed's trial restarted on 7 September 2021. However, as of 2023 his trial has been postponed again, further into 2023, with a possible plea deal that would withdraw the death penalty.

Early life and education
Mohammed was born on 14 April 1965, in Balochistan, Pakistan or Kuwait. His father, Shaikh Muhammad Ali Dustin al-Baluchi, was a Deobandi imam in Al Ahmadi, who moved with his family from Balochistan to Kuwait in the 1950s. His mother was Halema Mohammed. Mohammed was raised in Badawiya, a neighborhood of the Fahaheel suburb of Kuwait City. Mohammed is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted on terrorism charges for his part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Ammar Al Baluchi, who is accused of involvement in multiple terror plots.

According to U.S. federal documents, in 1982 he had heard Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's speech in which a call for jihad against the Soviets was declared. At age 16, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood. After graduating from high school in 1983, Mohammad travelled to the United States and enrolled in Chowan University in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. He later transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and received a Bachelor of Science (BS) in mechanical engineering in 1986.

The following year, he went to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he and his brothers, including Zahed, joined the mujahideen forces engaged in the Soviet–Afghan War. He attended the Sada training camp run by Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, and after that he worked for the magazine al-Bunyan al-Marsous, produced by Sayyaf's rebel group, the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan. In 1992, he received a master's degree in Islamic Culture and History through correspondence classes from Punjab University in Pakistan. By 1993, Mohammad had married and moved his family to Qatar, where he took a position as project engineer with the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water. He began to travel to different countries from that time onward.

The United States 9/11 Commission Report notes that, "By his own account, KSM's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." However, on August 29, 2009, The Washington Post reported from U.S. intelligence sources that Mohammed's time in the U.S. contributed to his radicalization.

"'KSM's limited and negative experience in the United States—which included a brief jail stay because of unpaid bills—almost certainly helped propel him on his path to becoming a terrorist,' according to this intelligence summary. 'He stated that his contact with Americans, while minimal, confirmed his view that the United States was a debauched and racist country.'"

Philippines 1994–1995
Mohammed was in the Philippines in late 1994 and early 1995; he then identified as a Saudi or a Qatari plywood exporter and used the aliases "Abdul Majid" and "Salem Ali."

Qatar, avoiding arrest
In early 1996, Mohammed returned to Afghanistan to avoid capture by U.S. authorities. In his flight from Qatar, he was sheltered by Sheikh Abdullah Al Thani, who was the Qatari Minister of Religious Affairs in 1996.

Operation Bojinka
Mohammed traveled to the Philippines in 1994 to work with his nephew Ramzi Yousef on the Bojinka plot, a Manila-based plot to destroy 12 commercial airliners flying routes between the United States, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The 9/11 Commission Report says that "this marked the first time KSM took part in the actual planning of a terrorist operation."

"Using airline timetables, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef devised a scheme whereby five men could, in a single day, board 12 flights—two each for three of the men, three each for the other two—assemble and deposit their bombs and exit the planes, leaving timers to ignite the bombs up to several days afterward. By the time the bombs exploded, the men would be far away and far from reasonable suspicion. The math was simple: 12 flights with at least 400 people per flight. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 deaths. It would be a day of glory for them, calamity for the Americans they supposed would fill the aircraft."

Bojinka plans included renting or buying a Cessna, packing it with explosives and crash landing it into CIA headquarters, with a backup plan to hijack the twelfth airliner in the air and use that instead. This information was reported in detail to the U.S. at the time.

In December 1994, Yousef had engaged in a test of a bomb on Philippine Airlines Flight 434 using only about ten percent of the explosives that were to be used in each of the bombs to be planted on U.S. airliners. The test resulted in the death of a Japanese national on board a flight from the Philippines to Japan. Mohammed conspired with Yousef in the plot until it was uncovered on 6 January 1995. Yousef was captured 7 February of that same year.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was indicted on terrorism charges in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in January 1996 for his alleged involvement in Operation Bojinka, and was subsequently on 10 October 2001 listed as one of the FBI's 22 Most Wanted Terrorists.

Relationship with Osama bin Laden
By the time the Bojinka plot was discovered, Mohammed had returned to Qatar and his job as a project engineer at the country's Ministry of Electricity and Water. He traveled in 1995 to Sudan, Yemen, Malaysia, and Brazil to visit elements of the worldwide jihadist community, although no evidence connects him to specific terrorist actions in any of those locations. On his trip to Sudan, he attempted to meet with Osama bin Laden, who was at the time living there, aided by Sudanese political leader Hassan al-Turabi. After the U.S. asked the Qatari government to arrest Mohammed in January 1996, he fled to Afghanistan, where he renewed his alliance with Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. Later that year, he formed a working relationship with Bin Laden, who had settled there.

Bin Laden and his colleagues relocated their operations to Afghanistan at this time. Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's chief of operations and also known at the time as Abu Hafs al-Masri, arranged a meeting between bin Laden and Mohammed in Tora Bora sometime in mid-1996, in which Mohammed outlined a plan that would eventually become the quadruple hijackings in 2001. Bin Laden urged Mohammed to become a full-fledged member of al-Qaeda, but he continued to refuse such a commitment until around early 1999, after the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

In 1997, Mohammed moved his family from Iran to Karachi, Pakistan. That year, he tried unsuccessfully to join mujahideen leader Ibn al-Khattab in Chechnya, another area of special interest to Mohammed. Unable to travel to Chechnya, he returned to Afghanistan. He ultimately accepted bin Laden's invitation to move to Kandahar and join al-Qaeda as a full-fledged member. Eventually, he became leader of al-Qaeda's media committee.

Plan for 11 September 2001 attacks
The first hijack plan that Mohammed presented to the leadership of al-Qaeda called for several airplanes on both US east and west coasts to be hijacked and flown into targets. His plan evolved from an earlier foiled plot known as the Bojinka plot (see above). Bin Laden rejected some potential targets suggested by Mohammed, such as the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, as he wished to simplify the attacks.

In late 1998 or early 1999, bin Laden gave approval for Mohammed to proceed to organize the plot. Meetings in early 1999 took place with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden, and his military chief, Mohammed Atef. Bin Laden led the plot and provided financial support. He was also involved in selecting the participants, including choosing Mohamed Atta as the lead hijacker. Khalid Sheikh provided operational support, such as selecting targets and helping arrange travel for the hijackers. Atef directed the actions of the hijackers.

After Atta was chosen as the leader of the mission, "he met with Bin Laden to discuss the targets: the World Trade Center, which represented the U.S. economy; the Pentagon, a symbol of the U.S. military; and the U.S. Capitol, the perceived source of U.S. policy in support of Israel. The White House was also on the list, as Bin Laden considered it a political symbol and wanted to attack it as well." If any pilot could not reach his intended target, he was to crash the plane.

According to testimony by Philip Zelikow, bin Laden was motivated by a desire to punish the US for supporting Israel and wanted to move up the attack date. Mohammed argued for ensuring the teams were prepared.

[Bin Laden] allegedly told KSM it would be sufficient simply to down the planes and not hit specific targets. KSM stood his ground, arguing that the operation would not be successful unless the pilots were fully trained and the hijacking teams were larger.

In a 2002 interview with Al Jazeera journalist Yosri Fouda, Mohammed admitted that he and Ramzi bin al-Shibh were involved in the "Holy Tuesday operation". ("Holy Tuesday operation" was the terrorists' code name for the 9/11 attacks, and the attacks actually did take place on a Tuesday.) KSM, however, disputes this claim via his Personal Representative: "I never stated to the Al Jazeera reporter that I was the head of the al-Qaeda military committee."

In an April 2002 interview with Al Jazeera correspondent Yosri Fouda, KSM, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh described the preparations for 9/11 attacks and said that they first thought of "striking at a couple of nuclear facilities" in the U.S. but then "it was eventually decided to leave out nuclear targets for now."

Daniel Pearl murder
According to a CNN interview with intelligence expert Rohan Gunaratna, Daniel Pearl was going in search of the al-Qaeda network that was operational in Karachi, and it was at the instruction of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that Daniel Pearl was killed." On 12 October 2006, Time magazine reported that "KSM confessed under CIA interrogation that he personally committed the murder." On 15 March 2007, the Pentagon stated that Mohammed had confessed to the murder. The statement quoted Mohammed as saying, "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head." This confession was gained under torture, and Mohammed listed many other crimes at the same time.

According to an investigative report published in January 2011 by Georgetown University, the Federal Bureau of Investigation used vein matching to determine that the perpetrator in the video of the killing of Pearl was most likely Mohammed, notably through identifying a "bulging vein" running across his hand. Concerned that the confession obtained through waterboarding would not hold up in court, federal officials used this forensic evidence to bolster their case.

Capture, interrogation, and torture
On 11 September 2002, members of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed to have killed or captured Sheikh Mohammed during a raid in Karachi that resulted in bin al-Shibh's capture. This claim was then subsequently proven as baseless.

Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan (about 20 kilometres southwest of Islamabad), on 1 March 2003, by the Pakistani ISI, possibly in a joint action with the CIA's Special Activities Division paramilitary operatives and officers of the American Diplomatic Security Service. He has been in U.S custody since that time.

Initially, Mohammed was held in the CIA's Salt Pit (Cobalt) prison in Afghanistan. After just a "few minutes" of questioning at Cobalt, he was subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques". He was slapped, grabbed in the face, placed in stress positions, placed in standing sleep deprivation, doused with water, and subjected to rectal rehydration multiple times, without a determination of medical need.

During 2003, Mohammad was held at a secret CIA prison, or black site, in Poland, where the CIA waterboarded him at least 183 times. He was then transferred to another secret CIA prison in Romania.

In September 2006, the U.S. government announced it had moved Mohammed from a secret CIA prison (or black site) to the military custody at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

The Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and Mohammed consider that the harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, which he received from U.S. agents amount to torture. Mohammad was also subject to sleep deprivation for a period of 7 and a half days, during much of which he was forced to stand.

According to later reports, Mohammed initially told American interrogators he would not answer any questions until he was provided with a lawyer, which was refused. He claims to have been kept naked for more than a month during his isolation and interrogations, and said he was "questioned by an unusual number of female handlers".

A CIA document reveals that Jane Harman (D-CA) and Porter Goss (R-FL) of the House Intelligence Committee were briefed on 13 July 2004, by the CIA Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt, General Counsel Scott Muller, and CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson on the status of the interrogation process of Mohammed. By this date, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been subjected to 183 applications of waterboarding.

The document states:

"... the CIA was seeking renewed policy approval from the NSC Principals to continue using the enhanced interrogation techniques."

A U.S. official has clarified that the "183" number represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed's face—not the number of times the CIA waterboarded him. According to a 2007 Red Cross report, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was subjected a total of "five sessions of ill-treatment."

"The water was poured 183 times – there were 183 pours," the official explained, adding that "each pour was a matter of seconds."

On 12 October 2004, Human Rights Watch reported that 11 suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had "disappeared" to a semi-secret prison in Jordan, and may have been tortured there under the direction of the CIA. At the time, Jordanian and American officials denied those allegations.

On 5 February 2008, the CIA Director Michael Hayden told a Senate committee that his agents had used waterboarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. A 2005 U.S. Justice Department memo released in April 2009 stated that Mohammed had undergone waterboarding 183 times in March 2003.

In October 2006, Mohammed described his mistreatment and torture in detention, including the waterboarding, to a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Mohammed said that he had provided a lot of false information, which he had supposed the interrogators wanted to hear, in order to stop the mistreatment. In the 2006 interview with the Red Cross, Mohammed claimed to have been waterboarded in five different sessions during the first month of interrogation in his third place of detention. While the Justice Department memos did not explain exactly what the numbers represented, a U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation programs explained the 183 figure represented the number of times water was applied to the detainee's face during the waterboarding sessions, rather than separate sessions.

In March 2007, after four years in captivity, including six months of detention and alleged torture at Guantanamo Bay, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as it was claimed by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing in Guantanamo Bay, confessed to masterminding the 11 September attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other various foiled attacks. "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said in a statement read Saturday during a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

According to the "unclassified summary of evidence" presented during the CSRT hearing, a computer hard drive seized during the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed contained the following:
 * information about the four airplanes hijacked on 11 September 2001, including code names, airline company, flight number, target, pilot name and background information, and names of the hijackers
 * photographs of 19 individuals identified as the 11 September 2001 hijackers
 * a document that listed the pilot license fees for Mohammad Atta and biographies for some of the 11 September 2001 hijackers
 * images of passports and an image of Mohammad Atta
 * transcripts of chat sessions belonging to at least 1 of 11 September 2001 hijackers
 * three letters from Osama bin Laden
 * spreadsheets that describe financial assistance to families of known al-Qaeda members
 * a letter to the United Arab Emirates threatening attack if their government continued to help the United States
 * a document that summarized operational procedures and training requirements of an al-Qaeda cell
 * a list of killed and wounded al-Qaeda militants.

At the hearing, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said the computer belonged not to him, but to Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, arrested together with him.

In June 2008, a New York Times article, citing unnamed CIA officers, claimed that Mohammed had been held in a black site or secret facility in Poland near Szymany Airport, about 100 miles north of Warsaw. There he was interrogated under waterboarding before he began to "cooperate".

In 2009, Mohammed described his actions and motivations in a document publicly released and known as The Islamic Response to the Government's Nine Accusations.

In April 2011, the British newspaper The Telegraph said it received leaked documents regarding the Guantanamo Bay interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The documents cited Mohammed as saying that, if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed by the Coalition of the Willing, an al-Qaeda sleeper cell would detonate a "weapon of mass destruction" in a "secret location" in Europe, and promised it would be "a nuclear hellstorm".

Report that interrogators abused his children
Ali Khan, the father of Majid Khan, another one of the 14 "high-value detainees," released an unsubstantiated affidavit on 16 April 2006, that reported that interrogators subjected Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's children, aged 6 and 8 years old, to abusive interrogation.

Khan's affidavit quoted another of his sons, Mohammed Khan:

"The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding."

Transfer to Guantanamo and hearing before his Combatant Status Review Tribunal
On 6 September 2006, American President George W. Bush confirmed, for the first time, that the CIA had held "high-value detainees" for interrogation in secret prisons around the world. He also announced that fourteen senior captives, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were being transferred from CIA custody, to military custody, at Guantanamo Bay detention camp and that these fourteen captives could now expect to face charges before Guantanamo military commissions.

In a 29 September 2006, speech, Bush stated:

"Once captured, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al Shibh, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were taken into custody of the Central Intelligence Agency. The questioning of these and other suspected terrorists provided information that helped us protect the American people. They helped us break up a cell of Southeast Asian terrorist operatives that had been groomed for attacks inside the United States. They helped us disrupt an al-Qaeda operation to develop anthrax for terrorist attacks. They helped us stop a planned strike on a U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, and to prevent a planned attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, and to foil a plot to hijack passenger planes and to fly them into Heathrow Airport and London's Canary Wharf."

In March 2007, Mohammed testified before a closed-door hearing in Guantanamo Bay. According to transcripts of the hearing released by the Pentagon, he said, "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z." The transcripts also show him confessing to:

 * Organizing the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
 * The Bali nightclub bombings
 * Richard Reid's attempted shoe bombing
 * Planning the attacks on Heathrow Airport and Big Ben clock tower in London
 * Daniel Pearl's murder in 2002
 * Planned assassination attempts on Pope John Paul II, Pervez Musharraf and Bill Clinton

"Because war, for sure, there will be victims. When I said I'm not happy that three thousand been killed in America. I feel sorry even. ... Killing is prohibited in all what you call the People of the Book, Jews, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. You know the Ten Commandments very well. The Ten Commandments are shared between all of us. We all are serving one God."

- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, before his tribunal

On 15 March 2007, BBC News reported that "Transcripts of his testimony were translated from Arabic and edited by the U.S. Department of Defense to remove sensitive intelligence material before release. It appeared, from a judge's question, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had made allegations of torture in US custody." In the Defense Department transcript, Mohammed said his statement was not made under duress but Mohammed and human rights advocates have alleged that he was tortured. CIA officials have previously told ABC News that "Mohammed lasted the longest under waterboarding, two and a half minutes, before beginning to talk." Legal experts say this could taint all his statements. Forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, M.D., an expert in false confessions, observed from the testimony transcript that his concerns about his family may have been far more influential in soliciting Mohammed's cooperation than any earlier reported mistreatment.

One CIA official cautioned that "many of Mohammed's claims during interrogation were 'white noise' designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day's interrogation session." For example, according to Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and the top Republican on the terrorism panel of the House Intelligence Committee, he admitted responsibility for the Bali nightclub bombing, but his involvement "could have been as small as arranging a safe house for travel. It could have been arranging finance." Mohammed also made the admission that he was "responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation," which killed six and injured more than 1,000 when a bomb was detonated in an underground garage, Mohammed did not plan the attack, but he may have supported it. Michael Welner noted that by offering legitimate information to interrogators, Mohammed had secured the leverage to provide misinformation as well.

In an article discussing the reliability of Khalid's confession and the motive for giving misinformation under torture, Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent with considerable experience interrogating al-Qaeda operatives, pointed out that:

"When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you're getting is useless."

His words are echoed by the U.S. Army Training Manual's section on interrogation, which suggests that:

"[T]he use of force is a poor technique, as it ... can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."

As an example of this the article discloses that although the George W. Bush administration made claims that the water-boarding (simulated drowning) of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed produced vital information that allowed them to break up a plot to attack the U.S. Bank Tower (formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center) in Los Angeles in 2002, this has been proven to be untrue. In 2002 Sheikh Mohammed was busy evading capture in Pakistan. Likewise the claim by former George W Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former CIA director of the National Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, that the torture of Khalid Mohammed produced the most significant lead in finding Osama bin Laden, has also been shown to be false. According to U.S. Senator John McCain, "The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times ... not only did the use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information."

List of confessions
Mohammed has made at least 31 confessions:
 * The February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City
 * The 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon using hijacked commercial airliners
 * A failed "shoe bomber" operation
 * The October 2002 attack in Kuwait
 * The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl
 * The 2002 Bali bombings, Pady's and Sari's club bombings in Bali, Indonesia
 * A plan for a "second wave" of attacks on major U.S. landmarks after the 9/11 attacks, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in Chicago, the Empire State Building in New York City, and what has been reported as the Plaza Bank Building in Seattle, although there is no Plaza Bank Building; there is a Safeco Plaza and Columbia Center, the city's tallest skyscraper
 * Plots to attack oil tankers and U.S. naval ships in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and in Singapore
 * A plan to blow up the Panama Canal
 * Plans to assassinate Jimmy Carter
 * A plot to blow up suspension bridges in New York City
 * A plan to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago with burning fuel trucks
 * Plans to destroy London Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London
 * A planned attack on many nightclubs in Thailand
 * A plot targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial targets
 * A plan to destroy buildings in Eilat, Israel
 * Plans to destroy U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan in 2002
 * Plots to destroy Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia
 * Surveying and financing an attack on an Israeli El-Al flight from Bangkok
 * Sending several "mujahideen" into Israel to survey "strategic targets" with the intention of attacking them
 * The November 2002 suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa Airport
 * Plans to attack U.S. targets in South Korea
 * Providing financial support for a plan to attack U.S., British and Jewish targets in Turkey
 * Surveillance of U.S. nuclear power plants in order to attack them
 * A plot to attack NATO's headquarters in Europe
 * Planning and surveillance in a 1995 plan (the "Bojinka plot") to bomb 12 American passenger jets
 * The planned assassination attempt against then-U.S. President Bill Clinton during a mid-1990s trip to the Philippines
 * "Shared responsibility" for a plot to kill Pope John Paul II
 * Plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
 * An attempt to attack a U.S. oil company in Sumatra, Indonesia, "owned by the Jewish former [U.S.] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger"

After Mohammed arrived at Guantanamo, a team of FBI and military interrogators tried to elicit from him the same confessions that the CIA had obtained about the 9/11 plot, but by using only legal means of interrogation. By 2008, the Bush administration believed that this so-called "Clean Team" had compiled sufficient evidence to charge Mohammed and the others with capital murder.

The Department of Defense announced on 9 August 2007, that all fourteen of the "high-value detainees" who had been transferred to Guantanamo from the CIA's black sites, had been officially classified as "enemy combatants". Although judges Peter Brownback and Keith J. Allred had ruled two months earlier that only "illegal enemy combatants" could face military commissions, the Department of Defense waived the qualifier and said that all fourteen men could now face charges before Guantanamo military commissions.

Confession used in Sheikh Omar's defense
On 19 March 2007, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh's lawyers cited Mohammed's confession in defense of their client.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, also known as Sheikh Omar, was sentenced to death in a Pakistani court for the murder of Daniel Pearl. Omar's lawyers recently announced that they planned to use Mohammed's confession in an appeal. They had always acknowledged that Omar played a role in Pearl's murder, but argue that Mohammed was the actual murderer.

Prosecution in France
In 2009, the French government decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in absentia on terrorism charges with respect to the Ghriba synagogue bombing on the Tunisian island of Djerba in 2002, which killed 14 German tourists, five Tunisians and two French nationals. They intended to charge him along with the captured German national Christian Ganczarski and Tunisian Walid Nawar. French judges later decided to separate Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's case from those of Ganczarski and Nawar and try him separately at a later date.

Trial for role in 9/11 attacks
On 11 February 2008, the United States Department of Defense charged Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Walid Bin Attash for the 11 September 2001 attacks under the military commission system, as established under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. They have reportedly been charged with the murder of almost 3,000 people, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism and plane hijacking; as well as attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury and destruction of property in violation of the law of war. The charges against them list 169 overt acts allegedly committed by the defendants in furtherance of the 11 September events.

The charges include 2,973 individual counts of murder—one for each person killed in the 9/11 attacks. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty, which would require the unanimous agreement of the commission judges.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights, and U.S. military defense lawyers have criticised the military commissions for lacking due process for a fair trial. Critics generally argue for the trials to be held in a federal district court, with defendants treated as criminal suspects, or by court-martial as a prisoner under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit civilian trials for prisoners of war. Mohammed could face the death penalty under any of these systems.

The case is progressing through the legal system. In August 2019 the trial date was tentatively set for 11 January 2021, by Judge W. Shane Cohen,    but this date was postponed on 18 December 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mohammed's trial restarted on 7 September 2021. The trial has been delayed further into 2023, with more delays expected. It has been reported that the Biden administration is considering a plea deal that would eliminate the death penalty.

Legal rulings affecting him
In Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the United States Supreme Court ruled that detainees had the right of access to US federal courts to petition under habeas corpus to challenge their detentions, and that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 were flawed. A revised Military Commissions Act was passed by Congress in 2009 to address court concerns.

Mohammed, in a letter submitted to the court on 26 July 2019, communicated the willingness to help the 9/11 attack victims and their families in their lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. The mastermind is said to have demanded the elimination of his death sentence in the exchange for his cooperation.

On 16 August 2023, the Pentagon and the FBI told families of the victims of the 11 September terrorist attacks that none of the alleged organizers of the attacks would face the death penalty as part of ongoing plea agreement considerations.

Release of new images
On 9 September 2009, photographs of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ammar al Baluchi were published on the Internet and widely in US and international media. Camp authorities have strict controls over the taking and distribution of images of the Guantanamo captives. Journalists and VIPs visiting Guantanamo are not allowed to take any pictures that show the captives' faces. Journalists may see "high value" captives such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed only when they are in the court room, where cameras are not allowed. But, on 9 September 2009, independent counter-terrorism researchers found new images of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew Ammar al Baluchi on "jihadist websites". According to Carol Rosenberg, writing in The Miami Herald: "The pictures were taken in July, said International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Bernard Barrett, under an agreement with prison camp staff that lets Red Cross delegates photograph detainees and send photos to family members."

In November 2014, a Turkish manufacturer of over-the-counter hair removal cream was found to be using an image of a disheveled Mohammed in adverts for their product.

Manifesto
In January 2014, a 36-page "nonviolence manifesto" written by KSM was declassified and released by the US government. The title is "Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's Statement to the Crusaders of the Military Commissions in Guantanamo." The document outlines 3 parts, but appears to be just the first section, describing "the path to happiness." The subject writes to his captors and appears interested in converting his wider audience to Islam. The notes contain eight books with three Western authors and penciled initials with the date 31 October 2013.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad has participated as a witness in the trials of two alleged al-Qaeda members, Zacarias Moussaoui and Salim Hamdan. Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Serrano wrote:

"In 2006, his interrogation summaries were read aloud in the capital murder trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, and Moussaoui was spared the death penalty. Two years later, different Mohammed statements were read in a military commission trial, or tribunal, that led to the release from Guantanamo Bay of Osama bin Laden's chauffeur, Salim Hamdan."

Stanly Cohen, an attorney for Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, requested to interview Mohammad, who they described as "the most qualified person alive" to assist in Abu Gaith's defense. Mohammad, through his attorney David Nevin, agreed to be interviewed, but only "in the absence of government personnel whether physically present or by listening or recording remotely."

Mohammed instead drafted a 14-page statement response to 451 interrogatories submitted by Cohen. In the response, Mohammad called Abu Ghaith, a "pious man" and "spellbinding speaker" who, to the best of his knowledge, did not play any military role in al-Qaeda operations and had no military training. Mohammed argued that Western foreign policy has been hypocritical in that it allowed for the rise of the Mujahideen in the Soviet War, but that Western media has since branded the Mujahideen "terrorists" or "foreign fighters". He further claimed that the Taliban's strict Islamic rule had restored security to Afghanistan in the 1990s. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that neither Mohammad's statement nor testimony were relevant to Abu Ghaith's trial, and thus inadmissible.

Personal life
Mohammed is fluent in Balochi, Urdu, Arabic, and English. He has two sons, aged seven and nine at the time of his arrest in 2002.

title: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed


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Norrland

Norrland (, "Northland", originally Norrlanden or "the Northlands") is the northernmost, largest and least populated of the three traditional lands of Sweden, consisting of nine provinces. Although Norrland does not serve any administrative purposes, it continues to exist as a historical, cultural, and geographic region; it is often referred to in everyday language, e.g., in weather forecasts. Several related Norrland dialects form a distinct subset of dialects of the Swedish language separate from those to its south.

Norrland consists of the majority of the Swedish landmass at about 60% of the land area, but only has about 12% of the country's population. Its largest city is Umeå, while the other four county seats are Gävle, Härnösand, Östersund and Luleå. The largest non-capitals are Sundsvall, Skellefteå and Örnsköldsvik while Kiruna is the largest town of the vast Lapland province in the far north. Sweden's highest mountain Kebnekaise and deepest lake of Hornavan are in Norrland. Plenty of long rivers originating in the mountains run through the Norrland forests, with major coastal towns frequently being on their estuaries. Their extensive drops in elevation also make Norrland a major producer of hydroelectricity from some of those rivers.

Winters in Norrland are cold by Swedish standards but mild for the latitudes. The vastness of the region renders very different environments and climates, ranging from mild coastal climates of Gävleborg to the tundra climate of the high mountains. In general, the most common climate is the subarctic type. The cold climate has led to winter sports being popular, with Norrland teams and athletes being especially successful in ice hockey, skiing and bandy.

Provinces and counties
Norrland comprises the historical nine provinces (landskap):

Historically, Jämtland and Härjedalen belonged to Norway until 1645, and are thus often considered outside of the historical Norrland. On the other hand, Finland belonged to Sweden until 1809, and during that time, Norrland was extended into Northern Finland. Administratively, Sweden is not divided into provinces but into counties (län). Although Norrland is defined in terms of the historical provinces and not the counties, it roughly comprises the modern counties of Gävleborg, Jämtland, Norrbotten, Västerbotten and Västernorrland.

Sometimes, Norrland is subdivided into Northern Norrland (norra Norrland) and Southern Norrland (södra Norrland). The northern part of the region typically covers the historical provinces of Norrbotten, Västerbotten and Lappland (the modern counties of Norrbotten and Västerbotten), while the southern part covers the remainder of the region. There is also the concept of Middle Norrland (mellersta Norrland), which is the northern part of Southern Norrland. Middle Norrland has no clearly defined boundaries, but usually corresponds with the historical provinces Ångermanland, Medelpad, Jämtland and Härjedalen.

Geography
Except for the coastal areas, Norrland is sparsely populated. Approximately 12 percent of Sweden's population lives in Norrland. Except for some coastal areas most of Norrland is made up by the Norrland terrain—hilly and mountainous land covered by boreal forests. More in detail Norrland is made up of three north–south belts: the Scandinavian Mountains in the west, the Muddus Plains covering much of the inland, and the mixed relief of the eastern coast.

Unlike the much more densely populated Svealand and Götaland, which are better known for big cities (Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö) with landmarks and tourist attractions, Norrland is known for its nature with wide forests, large rivers and untouched wilderness.

Most inhabitants live in rural areas and small villages and along the coast in cities. Towards the end of the 20th century, there was a noticeable increase of the population in Norrland, mainly from people moving from larger cities. The largest cities in Norrland, from north to south, are Luleå, Skellefteå, Umeå, Östersund, Sundsvall and Gävle. With the exception of Östersund, those cities are all near the coast.

During the Industrial Revolution, which reached Sweden in the mid-19th century, Norrland became the source for the important wood and pulp industry. All but four of the major Norrland rivers have been exploited for water power. The rivers in Norrland account for the bulk of hydroelectric power in Sweden, which is in many countries a limited energy source, but Sweden has hydroelectrical power account for approximately 40 percent of its total production of electricity.

Mines for producing precious metals have also been located in Norrland. In older history and still today, the administration in Stockholm viewed Norrland essentially as a colony consisting of natural resources to be exploited. "In Norrland we have an India within our borders, if only we realize we should be taking advantage of it" (I Norrland hava vi inom våra gränser ett Indien, blott vi förstå att bruka det) is a quote attributed to Axel Oxenstierna that fairly well describes the attitude. In the official history of Sweden, not much is written about the northern parts of the country.

Kebnekaise, Sweden's tallest mountain at 2,111 metres (6,926 feet), is located in Lappland in the north of Norrland.

Norrland has a highly variable climate depending on altitude, latitude and distance to water. The southern coastal areas have a humid continental climate, but further north, the subarctic climate is abundant, although it in many areas is very mild for that classification, especially in coastal regions. In the mountain ranges the tundra climate can be found with summer temperatures averaging below 10 C, but that is due to altitude and not in populated areas. All low-lying areas of Norrland are below the tree line because of the mild summers and so the boreal forest is dominant.

History
In older history, Norrland is one of the four lands of Sweden. To the west it represented the northern half of Sweden bounded to the south by Svealand and to the east it represented the northern half of Finland – which was then a part of Sweden – bounded to the south by Österland. In Svealand and Götaland, the land boundaries were of major juridical and administrative importance, but this was not the case with Norrland. The name Norrland just gradually became a denomination of everything north of Svealand. Up to the Middle Ages, the northern part of Norrland (Norrbotten and Lappland) was sparsely populated by Sami, Kvens and different tribes/people related to the Finns. In the southern part of Norrland, Swedish and Norwegian settlers lived side by side with the Sami population. From the Middle Ages on, the Swedish kings tried to colonize and Christianize the area.

As a result of the changing relations to Finland, the northern borders of Norrland have shifted. While the word Finland originally meant only the southwestern part of what is now Finland (Finland Proper), the border of Norrland was drawn at the rivers Kaakamojoki or, later, Simojoki. This changed when the eastern half of Sweden (Finland) was lost to Russia in 1809, and the new border was drawn at Torne River. The southern border was originally everything north of the Gästrikland province (until the 14th or 15th century a part of Uppland), but since the mid 17th century, Gästrikland is also considered a part of Norrland. The name can be first traced from Karl's Chronicle, explaining how Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson in 1433 sent a letter to Erik Puke requesting assistance to conquer entire Norrland (al norland vnte han honom wolla).

Sport
Ice hockey is generally regarded to be the most popular spectator sport in Norrland. Many of Sweden's most famous hockey players are natives of Norrland, including Peter Forsberg, Börje Salming, Markus Näslund, Henrik Lundqvist, Nicklas Bäckström, Elias Pettersson, and twin brothers Henrik and Daniel Sedin. As of the 2023–24 season, four Norrland teams currently compete in the Swedish Hockey League: Luleå HF, Skellefteå AIK, MoDo Hockey and Timrå IK. Additionally, Brynäs IF and IF Björklöven are also two popular teams from Norrland with long traditions in Swedish ice hockey who currently compete in the second highest league Hockeyallsvenskan.

Skiing, both alpine and nordic, is also a popular sport in Norrland. Two of Sweden's largest and most popular ski resorts, Åre and Hemavan, are located in Norrland. Famous skiers from the region include Ingemar Stenmark, Anja Pärson and Per Elofsson.

Football is also popular in Norrland, but teams from the region have rarely been on the same competitive level as the big city clubs in southern Sweden. To date, no Norrland team has ever won Allsvenskan, Sweden's highest-level football league, and Sandvikens IF is the only Norrland team that has ever finished in the top four (last time in 1956). As of the 2023 season, no team from Norrland currently plays in Allsvenskan. However, teams such as GIF Sundsvall, Gefle IF and Östersunds FK have all in recent years played many seasons in Sweden's highest league, and the region has produced its share of famous footballers. Gunnar Nordahl, Tomas Brolin, Jesper Blomqvist and Mikael Lustig are all footballers who grew up in Norrland, and went on to become Swedish internationals.

In fiction
Norrland is sometimes portrayed slightly negatively in Swedish fiction, sometimes being a place of terror and dread. The thriller films The Hunters and False Trail (The Hunters 2) show a highly negative portrait of Norrland, filled with racial prejudice and violence. The people of Norrland in their turn tend to have a fairly negative view of people from Stockholm and the rest of southern Sweden, for example by referring to Stockholm as fjollträsk, which loosely translated means "sissy town". This dynamic is portrayed in movies and series such as Sällskapsresan 2 – Snowroller, The Hunters and Pistvakt – En vintersaga. Despite Norrland being the most diverse of the three lands of Sweden in terms of languages and cultures it is usually portrayed as one homogeneous region. Fiction usually portrays characters from Norrland as villagers from the wilderness even though the majority of the population live in and around the coastal cities.

In the 2006 horror film Frostbite, the portrait is more balanced. Unlike most other Swedish films, it takes place in a larger community at the northern peak of Sweden, being filmed in Kalix and Kiruna. The people are shown to be pretty warm and welcoming towards outsiders. Rather than the people, the nature of Norrland is shown to be hostile. A constant darkness roams over the town and there is extreme cold. Vampires have been shown taking a liking to the land and hunt the towns people in the arctic night. The film is notorious for having the actors speak without the district Norrland accent, even the actors in the film who are native to Norrland.

A mixed portrait of the region is found in As It Is in Heaven (2004), which "vividly conveys both the delights and the challenges of small town living." The northern town is initially inhospitable to the main character as a boy, whose mother chooses to take him out of the town to escape bullying. He returns years later as an accomplished musician, only to find an insular town where bullying continues in several forms, including from the original classmates who troubled him as a youth. It is through his outside status—along with his music and desire share its joy—that the town finds redemption.

The plot of the well-known thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo shifts back and forth between Stockholm and the fictional Norrland town of Hedestad. A constantly repeated theme in the book's background are the social, cultural and physical differences between these two locations: Norrland is more sedate, conservative and slow-moving in comparison with the cosmopolitan Stockholm; a Stockholmer having to live for an extended period in Norrland feels "exiled to the back of beyond"; Norrland is also colder, and a Stockholmer coming there must urgently buy warmer clothes (a theme highlighted also in As It Is in Heaven); Norrlanders often speak regional dialects which Stockholm people find nearly incomprehensible; Stockholm people look down their noses at "a working class boy from Norrland" even when he had lived many years in Stockholm. The book's great success and translation into numerous languages made non-Swedish people more aware of Norrland and its special characteristics.

title: Norrland