Gelterkinden

Gelterkinden is a municipality in the district of Sissach in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. Gelterkinden is first mentioned between 1101–03 as Gelterkingen. Gelterkinden has an area, , of . Of this area, or 34.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 47.4% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 18.2% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.3% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.2% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 2.1% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 10.5% and transportation infrastructure made up 4.2%. Out of the forested land, 45.6% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.8% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 12.7% is used for growing crops and 17.8% is pastures, while 3.8% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The municipality is located in the Sissach district. The main village is located in the upper Ergolz valley at the confluence of the Ergolz and Eibach. It consists of the village of Gelterkinden and more than 20 other settlements including Sommerau, which has its own train station. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Trierced per pale, Azure, Argent and Gules. Gelterkinden has a population () of . , 15.7% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of 5.8%. Most of the population () speaks German (4,805 or 87.7%), with Italian language being second most common (173 or 3.2%) and Serbo-Croatian being third (120 or 2.2%). There are 47 people who speak French and 4 people who speak Romansh. the gender distribution of the population was 48.7% male and 51.3% female. The population was made up of 4,782 Swiss citizens (83.4% of the population), and 954 non-Swiss residents (16.6%) Of the population in the municipality 1,559 or about 28.5% were born in Gelterkinden and lived there in 2000. There were 1,398 or 25.5% who were born in the same canton, while 1,365 or 24.