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Stillingsön is a small community on the east side of the Island Orust located in Bohuslän at the west coast of Sweden.
The community of Stillingsön is constituted mostly of recreational houses. Stillingsön has a proud history of recreational resort and used to have bath houses and hotels for the high society. The recreational period started in 1865 when the owners of the nearby Kåröds horse farm moved a priests mansion here. Most of the houses are commonly painted in white with details painted in ocra yellow. Stillingsön (Stillings Island) was, as the name implies, originally an Island of its own, separated from Orust by a narrow sound. Since a couple of decades ago, the sound is dried out.
Today, Stillingsön is the name of the area surrounding the previous recreational village. The amount of recreational houses in the area is high, but there are a permanently open food store and gas station in Stillingsön.
Orust is the third largest Island in Sweden (only Gotland and Öland are bigger). Orust is separated from the main land and the Island Tjörn by a number of fjords and narrow sounds.
The first man came to Orust directly after the ice age that ended 11 000 years ago. Their living places, then nearby the sea, is today located 40-50 meters above the sea. In Enersbacken axes and arrow heads have been found from this period of time.
Graves has been found, dated back to the bronze age and in the year 1884 a bronze sword was found in the fjord of Ellös, measuring 101,5 centimeters long making it one of the longest found swords from this period of time.
Orust has been Swedish land since the country of Bohuslän was conquered in the year 1685.
Fishing has been very important to the inhabitants of Orust. The 18th century was called the "herring period" due to the great amount of herring available, which ended in 1808. The abrupt end of the herring period, made the inhabitants to move to other places and many of the coastal villages slowly died out.
After the herring period, an agricultural period began. But with the introduction of efficient machinery and tools, the demand for manual work decreased, and Orust was once again in decline. Between the year 1900 and 1968 the number of inhabitants was reduced by 50%.
In the 1950s, many of the ship makers of Orust, began building plastic boats, and still today the ship building industry is very important to Orust.
The number of inhabitants has varied a lot over the years. In 1528 there were 2 100 people living on the Island. In 1880, the number of inhabitants where as most 18 129 people. In 2006 Orust had 15 185 inhabitants.