Innlandet (fylke), Norway — Towns & Travel Guide

This is Norway's largest county by area. Innlandet was assembled in 2020 from Oppland and Hedmark, two old counties of the Østlandet interior, and it reaches deep into the forests and uplands away from the coast. Hamar serves as the administrative hub, with Lillehammer and Gjøvik close behind among the larger towns.

Elverum and Kongsvinger anchor the eastern side. Inland Norway, on a grand scale.

Innlandet stretches across the interior of south-eastern Norway, the largest county in the country by land. It has no coast. Built in 2020 from Oppland in the west and Hedmark in the east, it gathers forest, upland, and valley far from the sea, a sweep of inland country that climbs steadily away from the lower south-eastern lowlands of Østlandet toward higher and wilder ground in the north and west.

The land is vast and varied. The towns sit mostly in the lower south. Hamar, the seat, lies among the more settled country, with Lillehammer and Gjøvik to the west and Elverum and Kongsvinger out east in the old Hedmark forests.

Brumunddal and Raufoss fill in the working valleys between them. Beyond the towns the county runs into deep woodland and rising terrain that carries it toward the borders of the surrounding counties. Forest below, fell above, and the towns strung along the valleys: that is the shape of Innlandet.

Two old counties, one new identity. The culture of Innlandet still carries the distinct traditions of Oppland and Hedmark, the western and eastern halves that joined in 2020, each with its own valleys, dialects, and rural customs rooted deep in the forested interior of Østlandet rather than in any coastal life. Farm, forest, and valley shaped the way people live here.

The towns carry the public side of that culture. Hamar, the administrative seat, and the western towns of Lillehammer and Gjøvik hold the county's larger institutions, while Elverum and Kongsvinger keep the older traditions of the eastern Hedmark forests. Smaller places such as Brumunddal and Raufoss preserve the working-town heritage of the inland valleys.

The blend of Oppland and Hedmark, of upland farm and forest trade, gives Innlandet a settled inland character distinct from Norway's seafaring coast.

Innlandet is young as a county. It was created in 2020 by merging Oppland and Hedmark, two of the old counties of inland Østlandet, into a single administrative unit headquartered at Hamar. The decision joined the western valleys around Lillehammer and Gjøvik with the eastern forests around Elverum and Kongsvinger.

One seat now governs them. The merger made it the largest county in Norway by area.

The county has a cold, dry inland climate. With no coast to temper it, Innlandet sees sharper seasons than Norway's seaboard, the winters long and snowy across the Hedmark forests and the western valleys around Lillehammer and Gjøvik. Summers turn warm and settled inland.

Snow lies well into spring on the higher ground, and the towns of Hamar, Elverum, and Kongsvinger feel the full swing of an interior far from the sea. The cold deepens as the land rises north.

Most arrivals come overland from the south. Hamar, the seat, sits on the main inland rail line north from the Oslo area, and trains carry on through Brumunddal and Lillehammer up the western valleys. Elverum and Kongsvinger lie on the eastern routes through the Hedmark forests.

Drivers reach the county on the trunk roads running up from the south-eastern lowlands, with Gjøvik and Raufoss served from the west. The county opens from its southern towns and climbs inland from there.