Where to Stay in Hønefoss, Buskerud

Hønefoss is the administrative centre of Ringerike, an industrial and transport town built around the waterfall that gives it its name. The falls run through the middle. The town church of Hønefoss kirke stands by the water, the iron-age past of the district is gathered at Veien Kulturminnepark, and the regional story is kept at Ringerikes Museum, in this municipality in the south-eastern part of Buskerud, in south-eastern Norway.

Hønefoss takes its great landmark from the falls themselves, the rushing water that drives through the heart of the town. Hønefoss kirke stands beside them. Out in the lowlands the older churches of Haug kirke and Norderhov kirke hold the parishes of Ringerike, while the iron-age burial ground and longhouse at Veien Kulturminnepark and the collections of Ringerikes Museum keep the deep past of the district, and the transport history at Norsk Samferdselshistorisk Senter records the town's place on the routes of the south-eastern part of Buskerud.

Hønefoss grew at the falls, where the power of the rushing water drew mills and sawworks to the river. Water built the town. A settlement formed around the falls as timber from the inland valleys was floated down and worked at the waterside, and a town rose where the older farming parishes of Ringerike met the river, taking its name from the falls and raising Hønefoss kirke by the water as the industry gathered.

This was old farming country. The deep past of the district reaches back to the iron-age burial ground and longhouse at Veien Kulturminnepark, and the parishes of Haug and Norderhov kept their churches, Haug kirke and Norderhov kirke, long before the town took shape. The town grew on industry and routes.

Hønefoss became the meeting point of the roads and rail between the eastern lowlands and the inner valleys, a transport hub for the district, and its mills and factories made it an industrial centre of inner Østlandet. It once stood on its own. For a time the town was an independent municipality, before it was joined again to Ringerike, and as the administrative centre it now holds the falls, the lowland parishes and the routes of this south-eastern part of Buskerud together in south-eastern Norway, its story kept at Ringerikes Museum.

Hønefoss lies in the central lowlands of Ringerike, in the south-eastern part of Buskerud, in south-eastern Norway. The town sits where the river drops over its falls and runs on through the flat farming country, the rushing water dividing the streets in the centre. Lowland fields spread around it.

Hønefoss kirke stands by the falls, while the parishes of Haug and Norderhov and their churches lie out across the open land, and this municipality in Buskerud reaches from the river plain to the wooded ridges that ring the Ringerike lowland.

Hønefoss has a cold inland climate, set in the lowlands of Ringerike well back from the moderating coast. Winters run cold and snowy, with frost gripping the river plain and snow lying over the open fields and the falls through the long heart of the season. Summers are warm and bright.

The lowland farms and the wooded ridges around the town warm under the long northern daylight, while rain and cloud cross this part of the south-eastern part of Buskerud through every month of the year.

Hønefoss sits at a meeting of routes, a transport hub between the eastern lowlands and the inner valleys of south-eastern Norway. Roads and rail cross at the town, and from the station it is a short walk to the falls and Hønefoss kirke in the centre. Many arrive by train.

The roads and rail lines carry the traffic of this Ringerike town between the lowland districts and the inland valleys, while the lowland routes out toward Haug and Norderhov open the way through the farming country of this part of the south-eastern part of Buskerud.