Spydeberg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| County | Østfold | |
| District | ||
| Municipality | NO-0123 | |
| Administrative centre | Spydeberg | |
| Mayor (2003) | Stein Håland (Sp) | |
| Official language form | Bokmål | |
| Area - Total - Land - Percentage |
Ranked 362 142 km² 133 km² 0.04 % |
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| Population - Total (2004) - Percentage - Change (10 years) - Density |
Ranked 201 4,706 0.10 % 9.7 % 35/km² |
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| Coordinates | ||
| www.spydeberg.kommune.no |
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Spydeberg is a municipality in the county of Østfold, Norway. It is divided into the parishes Spydeberg, Heli and Hovin. The town of Spydeberg has approximately 4,000 inhabitants. It is located 45 km south-east of Oslo and is easily reached by a bus and a train line. There are 16 daily buses to Oslo, and about 12 train departures. A lot of the people in Spydeberg commute to Oslo for work. It is a very pleasant community with quite good infrastructure and is considered to be a safe and nice town to live in for families.
The municipality of Spydeberg has been quite active in international relations for over 20 years. The town has sister cities in Denmark, Sweden and Latvia. The Latvian counterpart is the village of Straupe, located approximately 90 km north-east of Riga. Excellent relations are being developed over the years with the people of this little village in Latvia. Straupe is celebrating its 800 years history in June/July of 2006.
[edit] Public figures
Petter Solberg, the famous WRC rally driver for Subaru, was born in Askim and raised in Spydeberg. He became FIA World Rally Champion in 2003. At present he lives officially in Monaco. His older brother Henning Solberg, current WRC rally driver for Ford, is still living at Spydeberg. Former Norwegian rally and race ace John Unnerud is also a in Scandinavia wellknown personality from Spydeberg.
[edit] The name
The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old farm Spydeberg (Norse Spjótaberg), since the first church was built here. The first element is the genitive plural case of spjót n 'spear', the last element is berg n 'mountain'. The word 'spear' is here probably referring to some outstanding points of a berg nearby.
[edit] Coat-of-arms
The coat-of-arms is from modern times (1978). It shows three heads of spears. (See above under the name.) The number of three is meant to represent the three parishes of the municipality.
| Municipalities of Østfold |  |
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Aremark | Askim | Eidsberg | Fredrikstad | Halden | Hobøl | Hvaler | Marker | Moss | Rakkestad | Rygge | Rømskog | Råde | Sarpsborg | Skiptvet | Spydeberg | Trøgstad | Våler |
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