Kongsvinger is a town and a municipality, almost the southernmost
in the Inland county. The municipality borders Eidskog in the south,
Sør-Odal in the west, Grue in the north and Sweden in the east. Most
of the area in Kongsvinger is forest, but there is also a lot of
agriculture and hundreds of lakes and watercourses. The town of
Kongsvinger had 12,088 inhabitants as of 2020.
Kongsvinger
town is located on both sides of the Glomma, with Kongsvinger
fortress as a landmark on a hill in the northern part of the town.
Kongsvinger is the regional center for the Glåmdal region, also
called the Kongsvinger region, which consists of Odalen, Vinger,
Eidskog and Solør. The municipal slogan is «Kongsvinger - active
regional center in growth».
History
Before 1814
The village of Vinger by Glommakneet
has been an important place since the Viking Age, and several finds
from the Stone Age have been made in the area around Vingersjøen.
The road through Eidskog to Sweden, Eskoleia, is already mentioned
in the sagas. It crosses the Glomma right where the river turns
abruptly to the west. For a long time there was a church, probably a
stave church, on the east side of Glomma. Vinger Church is first
mentioned in the saga of Håkon Håkonsson, in the account of the
battle between the king and the Ribbungs in 1227. The Union King
Erik of Pomerania visited Norway in 1405 and then chose the
Wingerske Kongevei.
Tråstad fortification, then called
Vingersund fortification, was built in 1658 to protect the ferry
crossing over the river. There are also maps that indicate that a
fortification was built a little higher up at about the same time
where the current church was later built. The main defense was moved
to the top of Tråstadberget in 1673 with the construction of Vinger
skanse, also called Gyldenborg after Ulrik Fredrik Gyldenløve.
In 1681–1684, the actual work on the fortress facility
Kongsvinger fortress began. As King Christian V caused this, the
prefix Kongs- in front of Wings Fortress was added. In this
connection, the Camp (the camp as in a military camp) arose, with
its workers (called crews). These built their houses according to a
right-angled street plan, designed by General Johan Caspar de
Cicignon. The town's birth can then be added to 1682, even though it
would be 172 years before Kongsvinger became a market town. At the
end of the 18th century, the camp was given a temporary post office,
six years later it became permanent.
The area around the
fortress, Øvrebyen, is today dominated by wooden houses. This was
built from the early 18th century to the late 19th century. Vinger
church, built in the 17th century, but with crucifixes from the 14th
century, is located in the district Øvrebyen, by the town's old
square, now called Kirketorget. The church was rebuilt several
times, in 1854 it got its rare dome tower for Norway.
Kongsvinger-marken, a horse and cattle field, received a royal
letter in the 1780s and is still arranged with three days in May and
September each year.
1814–1905
When Norway entered into a
union with Sweden in 1814, Kongsvinger's role in the border defense
was played out. Instead, the city became an important stopover for
travelers between the two countries. The fortress nevertheless
remained in operation, as the Glomma was seen as an important line
of defense if one of the countries were to be invaded by a third
party. In 1823, however, the fortress was evacuated, and only a few
employees remained. As a result, large parts of the city's financial
base, which was to supply goods and services to the fortress, fell
away.
A French-like unpretentious peasant population, who
read more newspapers than other farmers in Norway. Vinje also wrote
about the beautiful farms on the northern shore of Lake Vingersjøen,
with manors and upper-class company with guests from both Norwegian
and Swedish social and political elites. In fact, there was no other
city than Oslo that had as many royal visits as Kongsvinger in the
period from 1814 to 1865.
In 1854, a group of citizens under
the leadership of Postmaster Ole J. Tommelstad succeeded in
persuading the Storting to grant Kongsvinger market town rights. The
following year, the city was separated from Vinger municipality as
its own city municipality. In 1856, a wooden bridge was built over
the Glomma at Kongsvinger.
The railway development in Norway
reached Kongsvinger in 1862 on its way from Oslo to Stockholm. The
line, and thus Kongsvinger station, was built south of Glomma, while
Kongsvinger had always been limited to the north of the river.
Around the station, new buildings called Stasjonsbyen grew up, which
was located in Vinger municipality outside the town of Kongsvinger.
As part of the rearmament in the years before the dissolution of
the union, the line of defense along the Glomma was restored.
Kongsvinger Fortress was considered vulnerable if enemy artillery
gained a foothold on Holtberget south of Glomma. New fortifications
were therefore built on Vardåsen and Gullbekkåsen, two twin heights
northwest of and higher than the old fortress. This became the twin
forts Vardåsen and Gullbekkåsen fort, which were handed over to the
Coastal Artillery in 1903. The construction of these forts
stimulated the city's economy again. During the negotiations on the
dissolution of the union, the Swedes demanded that all modern
fortifications along the border be demolished, but eventually agreed
that the facilities at Kongsvinger should be saved.
After 1905
In 1939, the German prize crew from the "City of
Flint" were interned at the fortress, and thus the people of
Kongsvinger became acquainted with the German armed forces long
before others in the country, when German officers could move freely
in the city in uniform. In April 1940, some of the most important
battles in the country took place in Kongsvinger. Kongsvinger
Fortress immediately capitulated, but Vardåsen quickly, under the
leadership of the Swedish captain Gösta Benckert with Max Manus and
"Shetlands-Larsen" in the company, fought for hours against German
forces before retreating along the Glomma.
To prevent German
advance, attempts were made to blow up the bridge, but the attempt
failed. The bridge remained standing, albeit with a special profile.
In 1949, a new suspension bridge, Kongsvinger bridge, was built next
to the old bridge, as this, in addition to being damaged, had become
too small.
At the fort at Gullbekkåsen, the Air Force's
Station Kongsvinger (LST / K) was built with a radar station in
1955, in operational operation until 1964, when the Air Force's
station Måkerø took over the Armed Forces' radar surveillance of
southern Scandinavia. The station became Luftforsvarets Kontroll og
Varslingsskole (LKVS) in 1964. The radar covered an area from
Steinkjer in the north to Hamburg in the south, from Stockholm in
the east to Bergen in the west. LKVS was moved to Måkerøy on 1
August 2002 and at the same time the Air Control Inspectorate (LKI)
also disappeared. After this, the facilities at Gullbekkåsen were
taken into use as a prison, even though the radar itself remained in
operation. Vardåsen fort was left unused and dilapidated.
In
1963, a regional hospital was opened in Kongsvinger, which
eventually had a wide selection of everything from the intensive
care unit to orthopedics. The following year, in 1964, the urban
municipality of Kongsvinger was merged with the rural municipalities
of Brandval and Vinger into Kongsvinger municipality. In this
connection, Kongsvinger was a county municipality (rural
municipality) for a few months, before the city status was restored.
The old divide between Kongsvinger and Vinger was thus erased.
Kongsvinger swimming facility opened in 1988, followed by
Kongsvinger Ishall in 1992 and Kongsvingerhallen on 14 December
1997. In the meantime, national road 2 in 1991 had been laid in a
new route outside the city center streets, including a new bridge
over Glomma, Gjemselund bridge, a new bridge along the Glomma under
the old, Riverbank bridge, and Wings tunnel under the train station.
The city's Catholic congregation got its own church, Sta. Clara
Catholic Church, in 2001. This became the first new church in the
city since 1697 and the first Catholic site before the Reformation.
In the city center, the shops gathered in shopping malls. In
Midtbyen north of Glomma, Kongssenteret is the largest with 16,000
m² after completion in 2002. Parts of the pedestrian street in
Sentrum Syd got glass roofs. Another change in the city center was
that the old primary school Sentralskolen was closed in 2005 and a
new school at Marikollen was opened. The buildings for Sentralskolen
were then built into the new Sentrum upper secondary school, which
is a merger of the old Sentrum upper secondary school and
Kongsvinger technical vocational school. The library was also moved
here. The new buildings opened in January 2009.
In the
justice sector, new buildings were also built. The new Kongsvinger
prison on Vardåsen opened in 2002, although the development was
still going on for a few years. Next came Kongsvinger courthouse in
2006.