I took this picture of the mill from the city I grew up. I took the picture because the river run low.
And yes John Cleese hate Kongsvinger (Winger), since it reminded him about Weston-super-Mare [1]. Plus not many visit this place, since when customs ask one guy departed one boat from Denmark in Oslo. He told the customes he was going to Kongsvinger for a three week holiday. The customs did not belive him, since nobody have so long holiday in Kongsvinger, and it turned out corretly the guy was just an smugler.
Back to the mill it was build in 1882. Here you see an elderly picture about 1900 [2]
Back to my picture. In the distance you can see the train station. It was the first Norwegian public funded railway line. It was Robert Stephenson, son of George Stephenson (creator of The Rocket), in 1858 completed the construction of the Kongsvinger railway (Kongsvingerbanen) [3] .
As an side note, since many of the english wokers on the railway had previously been worked in US of A. They called some norwegian workers Indians, those workers was from an area called Odalen. And in Odalen we have even an area named prairie. It is the area I'm born. The area is named Odal, but we have one south and north. I'm from North.
Here is one local indian [7].
They from Nord Odalen are called the crazy ones. In youth I was in one computer group that created one adventure game named "Macan" (joke about Familien Macahan "the How the West Was Won"). Should be "Makan" but lack of space we used C instead of K. Makan is in english "the same". It have some refer to Odalen where the "hero" drag body of thirteen nuns into the sheriff office in belief that he had taken some thieves. But sheriff told that the thieves already have been taken and wonder about the blunder.
"Jæ æ fra Odalen jæ, jæ bruker jå fist, så dræper jæ me stein" translated to "I'm from Odalen, first I use scythe then I kill them with rocks".
The answer from the sheriff was "everyone makes mistakes, I've done similar and it is only one way to solve this". And the sheriff gave the "hero" one pistol.
The game was ranked one of the twenties worst games in Norway.
I can wear both the the Odal rune and Mjolnir (Mjølner) because my name is Tor.
Back to Kongsvinger, when Norway was occupied by Sweden. The King had residence a bit outside the city centre [4]. But the King did not trust us. He was afraid we nicked everything so he shipped everything, even furnitures, back and forth between Skinnarbøl and Stockholm.
One kind of famous person from Kongsvinger is Dagny Juel, here painted by Edward Munch. In Kongsvinger there is one Norwegian Women's Museum (Norsk kvinne museum) at her childhood home.
Still she got shot by her friend Emeryk. Not suprining when she was in the bohemian environment together with authers like August Strindberg [5] and drinking Absinthe.
I almost forgot that under WWII the fortress was run by the gestapo. The gestapo training the norwegian police at the fortress [6]. Still Kongsvinger train police even foreigner. I met one from Kofi Annan police force some years ago.
I need to comment the city is quite corrupt, well in Norway we say friendly services. Because we do not have corruption in Norway. Just kind and friendly persons. Plus lots of multikultural narcotic drugs smugling are going trough the city because it is close the Swedish boarder and not far from Oslo.
[1] https://www.glomdalen.no/nyheter/cleese-om-kongsvinger/s/1-57-4638337
[2] https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1QD3R_kongsvinger-molleruiner?guid=925980dd-1311-4157-b938-aeb4de0361dd
[3] https://lokalhistoriewiki.no/wiki/Robert_Stephenson
[4] https://digitaltmuseum.no/021015453265/kong-oscar-ii-og-dronning-sophie-pa-skinnarbol
[5] https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagny_Juel
[6] http://www.fortid.no/tidsskrift/download/fortid_0902.pdf
[7] http://odalsportalen.no/Nyheter/2014/06/16/Miss-Universe-Norway-snart-finale