Town of Aurora Twinned with Leksand Sweden

Many times I passed by the Welcome to Aurora sign which also said Twinned with Leksand Sweden. Wow I said we have twin in Sweden. I hope the place is identical; it would be so cool to see a mirror image of our town. Well, not so fast, they are fraternal twins, means non-identical. Since 1976 Town of Aurora been twinned with Leksand, the hockey capital of Sweden. It all started with first Aurora minor hockey team visit back in 1971 and the official offer for twinning started.

‘The twinning of towns and cities from country to country is an important way of building better understanding between peoples of different nations.’ – Source Said

I did some research on Leksand in Sweden. Leksand is a town of 16,000 plus population in Central Sweden. It is located on the equivalent latitude as Yellowknife in Canada [latitude 61 degrees North]. That means more daylight, as much as 20 hours of light per day in the summer. I grew up in Europe, and I remember those long days, it was a lot of fun. There are many geographical similarities between the two towns, which you can read about on our official Town of Aurora web site.


When I did my research, looks like the twinning is worldwide thing, and there are official organizations that keep track of the twinning. However, here are two other interesting things I found. Our twin sister Leksand is a twin sister to other six twin sisters: Hørsholm, Denmark, Lillehammer, Norway, Oulainen, Finland, Karksi-Nuia, Estonia, Tōbetsu, Hokkaidō, Japan, Brainerd, Minnesota, U.S. I wonder how they display this information on their signs, and why not brothers. The second fact is – the tallest man on Earth comes from Leksand Sweden.

Leksand after all is a nice place to visit if you are from Aurora [check out the map, its right on the nice big lake called Siljan]; and Aurora is definitely a nice place to visit if you are from Leksand. We don't have many attractions here, but we have 33 plus playgrounds and few trails - bring your bike with you. Nothing like a nice piece of nature, but we have all kinds of nice attractions kilometers away outside of Aurora.


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