"Small town made of timber" a Lillestrøm Travel Page by jonkb

The short version is probably the most informative: I was raised only 6 km north of this town, and I went to high school here.

My parents still live in the house I grew up in, so visiting Lillestr?m is something I do on a yearly basis (everytime I visit my parents, since all the trains go to Lillestr?m)

Lillestr?m was founded because of the timber industry and the use of steam to drive saws, originally it was only a huge moore one the site, something that you still get the feeling of when visiting in the late summer. There are lots of small mosquitos. Luckilly no one of them carry any bakteria or viruses that can make you ill.

Originally saws was drawn by watermills. Str?mmen is a little town just south of Lillestr?m (walking distance) which had such a saw. Timber was floated down the much more dosile Glomma, Nitelva and Leira. After being collected the timber was dragged up to the saw. Str?mmen actually means stream (of water) because of this river. The river is called Sagdalselva (litterally: Saw Valley River)

The industrial revolution came to Norway as well. That ment that we could use steampowered saws insteas of waterpowered ones. Steam didn't have to be placed high up on the hillside, so a steamsaw was placed on the moore on the other side of Nitelva. Pretty soon a small village grew up besides the steamsaw. It was the workers who had buildt their little houses besides the workplace, the little village grew to what we today know as Lillestr?m (Little stream). Both the waterpowered and the steampowered saws are gone now, but the site where the town hall is used to be the place where the large majority of the steamsaws was. The area was called Dampsagtomta (Steam saw lot) before the hall was built.

The cut timber used to be carried by train to Christiania (now Oslo), but in the late 1800's Norway got it's first railway carrying passengers from Christiania to Eidsvoll (where the constitution was written on May 17th 1814). This line was built through both Str?mmen and Lillestr?m. Lillestr?m is today the most natural transport hub between Oslo and Oslo Airport Gardermoen.