Hell is the center of Lånke in Stjørdal municipality, Trøndelag. Hell is located south of Stjørdalselva and Trondheim Airport, Værnes. Before there was a bridge connection over the Stjørdal river in 1856, there was ferry traffic across the river at Sandfærhus and Mælen. Hell was the administrative center in Lånke municipality until 1 January 1962, when the municipality became part of the new Stjørdal municipality. Hell was considered a separate town by Statistics Norway until 2019, when it was calculated together with Stjørdalshalsen. In 2018, the town of Hell had 1,589 inhabitants, and covered an area of 1.04 km².
Name
Visitors, preferably from abroad, come to Hell station to
take a picture of the sign with the place name and the sign with the
text Hell Gods Expedition. This is the old spelling for goods
expedition, and also this has a special meaning in English, namely
«the expedition of the gods».
The name Hell comes from the
Old Norse word hellir, which means rock cave, hidden under an
overhanging rock.
Hell Shopping Center is located on
Sandfærhus on the other side of Stjørdalselva, but still has a name
after the place, like Scandic Hell, one of the largest hotels in
Norway. The Blues in Hell festival is held annually, which in 2010
was named one of the best blues festivals in Europe.
Transport
The Hell area is today a busy traffic hub with
Trondheim Airport Værnes as the nearest neighbor. From Europavei 6
at Sandfærhus there is an exit to Selbu and Tydal with a beautiful
year-round road (Fylkesvei 705) over the mountains to Brekken and
Røros, or Sweden through Funäsdalen.
The Nordlandsbanen is
connected at Hell station to the Meråkerbanen, which enters the
Swedish railway network via Storlien to Stockholm. A short way from
Hell, Europavei 6 is connected to Europavei 14, which goes east to
the national border at Storlien.