Where to Stay in Engerdal, Innlandet

Engerdal is the seat of the Engerdal kommune. The small village gathers the council, the trade and the services of a high, thinly settled forest and fell district in the north-eastern part of Innlandet, the meeting point of the scattered farms and parishes of a wide upland country. Engerdal kirke marks the centre.

The heritage church stands over the village, the chief landmark of this remote corner of Østlandet, and the settlement holds the administrative life of a district that spreads far beyond the cluster of houses around it.

Engerdal kirke is the chief mark of this upland country. The heritage church stands over the village at the centre of the Engerdal kommune, the one named landmark of a wide and thinly settled district. The land itself is the rest.

Around the church the forests and fells of the high north-eastern part of Innlandet spread out across this remote corner of Østlandet, an open upland of scattered farms where the church marks the gathering point of the parish.

The parish came before the centre. Long before Engerdal grew into the administrative village at the heart of the district, the people of this high country gathered around their church, and the heritage Engerdal kirke marks where the scattered farming community of the upland settled in the north-eastern part of Innlandet. The land set the pattern.

This is a remote, thinly peopled corner of Østlandet, a wide district of forest, fell and open upland where the farms lay far apart and the parish formed around its church rather than around a town, and the settlement that became Engerdal rose at the natural meeting point of the roads and the farms. The church held the community together. Engerdal kirke carries the marks of a heritage building, a church of standing that records the long life of the parish across the centuries of upland farming and forestry.

In time the cluster of houses around the church became the seat of the surrounding Engerdal kommune, the place where the council and the trade of a wide district were drawn together into one small centre. The high country still rules the place. The forests and fells of the kommune spread out around the village much as they always have, and Engerdal holds the working life of a district far larger than itself from its centre in the north-eastern Innlandet upland.

Engerdal lies in south-eastern Norway, in the north-eastern part of Innlandet, in its own high upland kommune. The village sits among the forests and fells of a wide mountain district, where the woods climb away in every direction and the open upland of the Engerdal kommune rolls out across the high country toward the borders of the region. Fells rise on every side.

Engerdal kirke stands over the centre, and the wider reaches of this remote corner of Østlandet spread out around the village into the forest and fell of the north-eastern Innlandet upland.

Engerdal has the hard, cold weather of the high inland upland, set far up in the north-eastern part of Innlandet. Winters run long, deep and snow-bound across the forest and fell, holding the cold far into the spring, while summers stay short and cool under the long northern daylight that lingers late over the scattered farms of the Engerdal kommune. The altitude rules the year.

Snow lies long over the high ground around Engerdal kirke and the open upland of this remote corner of Østlandet, and the cold of the inland fells shapes the seasons of the thinly settled district.

The upland road brings you in. Engerdal sits on the routes that climb through the high forest and fell country of the kommune, so visitors reach the village by car across the north-eastern part of Innlandet, driving in through the woods from the towns down the valleys. No railway runs to this high country.

The nearest line and the nearest airport lie well away to the south and west, a long mountain drive from the centre, and buses thread the upland roads of this remote corner of Østlandet to bring travellers up to the village by Engerdal kirke.