Kerns

Geschichte

Kerns is a village in the canton of Obwalden in Switzerland.HistoryKerns is first mentioned in 1036 as Chernz though this mention is from a 14th Century copy of the original document. After 1101 it was normally mentioned as Chernes.GeographyKerns has an area, of 92.6km2. Of this area, 46.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while 28.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 2.5% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (21.9%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains).The municipality is located on a terrace on the south-west slope of the Stanserhorn and Arvigrat mountains in the Sarneraatal and Melchtal valleys. It is the largest municipality in the canton. It consists of the village of Kerns with the sections of Dorf, Siebeneich, Wisserlen, Halten and Dietried, the hamlets of Sankt Niklausen and Melchtal as well as the resort of Melchsee-Frutt.DemographicsKerns has a population of., 8.0% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 7.9%. Most of the population speaks German (96.2%), with Albanian being second most common ( 1.3%) and Portuguese being third ( 0.5%).the gender distribution of the population was 49.8% male and 50.2% female. there are 1,700 households, and there were 2,110 households in Kerns alone, with 15 in St. Niklausen, 180 in Melchtal and 15 in Melchsee-Frutt.In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 38.1% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP (36.6%), the Other (16.9%) and the SPS (8.3%).