Wilderswil

Wilderswil is a village and a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. Wilderswil belongs to the Small Agglomeration Interlaken with 23,300 inhabitants (2014). The village of Wilderswil is situated at the southern border of the Bödeli, the tongue of land between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz in the Bernese Oberland region. It lies at the entrance to the mountain valleys containing the Lütschine river and its tributary the Saxetenbach, and is some south of Interlaken, the main town of the Bödeli. The municipality extends for some from the village, along the west bank of the Lütschine river, and includes the flanks of the mountains that border that valley to the west. Its altitude ranges from some , on the Bödeli plain, to , at the summit of Sulegg. It consists of the villages of Wilderswil, Mülenen and Gsteigallmend. Wilderswil has an area of . Of this area, or 19.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 57.4% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 10.0% is settled (buildings or roads), or 1.3% is either rivers or lakes and or 11.6% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 3.8% and transportation infrastructure made up 4.4%. Out of the forested land, 53.8% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.7% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 2.2% is used for growing crops and 7.7% is pastures and 9.5% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. Of the unproductive areas, 6.7% is unproductive vegetation and 4.9% is too rocky for vegetation. On 31 December 2009, Amtsbezirk Interlaken, the municipality's former district, was dissolved. On the following day, 1 January 2010, it joined the newly created Verwaltungskreis Interlaken-Oberhasli. The area was settled by Alamanni around the year 600. The name also comes from this period. In 1895, in excavations for the construction of a hotel, a graveyard of 15 graves from the seventh century, with 18 skeletons and burial objects, was discovered.