Bellwald

Bellwald is a municipality in the district of Goms in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Bellwald was first used to refer to the nearby mountain 1273 Beliwalt and 1293 Belwalt. The name then came to mean the main village below the mountain. The village was first mentioned in 1374 as Zblattun. Bellwald has an area, , of . Of this area, 49.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while 19.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 4.4% is settled (buildings or roads) and 26.2% is unproductive land. It lies at and is the highest village in Goms, or the upper Rhône river valley. The municipality consists of scattered settlements between the Rhône and Fiescher valley. It consists of the village of Bellwald and the hamlets of Ried, Eggen, Bodmen and Fürgangen. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Azure, issuant from Coupeaux Vert a Pine tree of the same trunked Maroon. Bellwald has a population () of . , 15.2% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of -6.5%. It has changed at a rate of -3.3% due to migration and at a rate of 2.4% due to births and deaths. Most of the population () speaks German (375 or 87.8%) as their first language, Serbo-Croatian is the second most common (16 or 3.7%) and Albanian is the third (12 or 2.8%). There are 3 people who speak French, 1 person who speaks Italian. the gender distribution of the population was 51.5% male and 48.5% female. The population was made up of 199 Swiss men (43.4% of the population) and 37 (8.1%) non-Swiss men. There were 189 Swiss women (41.3%) and 33 (7.2%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 217 or about 50.8% were born in Bellwald and lived there in 2000. There were 69 or 16.2% who were born in the same canton, while 59 or 13.8% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 71 or 16.6% were born outside of Switzerland. The age distribution of the population () is children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 25.8% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 57.