Härkingen is a municipality in the district of Gäu in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. History Härkingen is first mentioned in 1080 as quendam comitatum nomine Härichingen in pago Buchsgeowe situm (Kopie). In 1101 it was mentioned as 03 apud Harichingen. Geography Härkingen has an area, , of . Of this area, or 51.6% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 22.0% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 27.6% is settled (buildings or roads). Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 5.3% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 6.2% and transportation infrastructure made up 8.5%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 7.1% of the area Out of the forested land, 20.4% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.6% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 44.9% is used for growing crops and 5.5% is pastures, while 1.3% is used for orchards or vine crops. The municipality is located in the Gäu district, in the Dünnern valley south of the division of the A1 and A2 motorways. Coat of arms The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Azure an Oak Stump with two branches leaved and acorned Or rising from a Mount of 3 Coupeaux Vert. Demographics Härkingen has a population () of . , 11.7% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 9.9%. Most of the population () speaks German (1,105 or 92.4%), with Italian being second most common (22 or 1.8%) and Albanian being third (20 or 1.7%). There are 7 people who speak French. , the gender distribution of the population was 51.8% male and 48.2% female. The population was made up of 581 Swiss men (44.4% of the population) and 98 (7.5%) non-Swiss men. There were 551 Swiss women (42.1%) and 80 (6.1%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 414 or about 34.6% were born in Härkingen and lived there in 2000. There were 357 or 29.8% who were born in the same canton, while 265 or 22.2% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 131 or 11.0% were born outside of Switzerland. In there were 14 live births to Swiss citizens and 1 birth to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time