A Fast development

Umea was built in 1622 but until last decades it has not been a very important city in Sweden. The harsh climate, the long distance with the capital and the repetitive fires and Russians invasions that have devastated it are the reason. But since the middle of the last century the city has grown very fast. It coincides with the starting of the Umea University. The development of this university was favoured by the inauguration of the dental school in 1956, as well as the establishment of the Umea’s Graduate School for Social Work in 1962 and the construction of the airport which opened the same year. The necessity of a dental school was due to the high rate of dental problems that the population of the Nord of Sweden had in that time. They couldn’t go to the dentist due to the large distance with the Southern part where most of dentist were located. Since then the city has become more and more important. People from all Sweden and the rest of the world have been coming here for decades and nowadays the population of Umea is the double of the population in 1965.