Åsnes


Åsnes is a municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Solør. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Flisa, which is also the largest town in the municipality with around 2,100 people.

General information

Name

The municipality is named after the old Åsnes farm, since the first church was built here. The first element is áss which means "mountain ridge" and the last element is nes which means "headland".

Coat-of-arms

The coat-of-arms is from modern times. They were granted on 9 December 2001. The arms show three black hooks for log driving on a gold background. This was chosen to represent the importance of logging and forestry to the municipality throughout history.
AncestryNumber
59
58
55
32
29
25
23
22

History

Åsnes was originally part of the larger district Hof. It was first split into two: Hof and Åsnes og Våler in 1849. The split left Hof with 2,913 inhabitants and Åsnes og Våler with 7,087. Åsnes og Våler was again divided in 1854 into the two current municipalities of Våler and Åsnes. At that time, Åsnes had 3,644 inhabitants while Våler had 3,410. In 1963, Hof was incorporated back into Åsnes. The population of Åsnes grew fast between 1854 and 1963 and today its population is roughly equal to that of Hof and Våler combined. There has been talk of further municipality merging but the neighboring municipalities Grue and Våler have rejected Åsnes in favor of bigger municipalities.

Geography

The municipality is located in the southern part of Hedmark county. It is bordered on the north by the municipality of Våler, in the south by Grue, and in the west by Nord-Odal and Stange, and to the east it borders Torsby Municipality in Sweden.
Finnskogen or the forest of the Finns is a belt about wide which runs continuously northwards along the border between Norway and Sweden through six Norwegian municipalities, including Åsnes.

Sister cities

The following cities are twinned with Åsnes: