Kongsvinger Fort is a lot smaller than Akershus Fort in Oslo. U'll find Konsvinger Fort about 100 km. north-east of Oslo - may be a little shorter now because of a new road.
The first sort of fortress where Kongsvinger Fort is today was started 1657/1658. The real fort was built 1681 - 1689. At this time Norway was still a part of and ruled from Denmark. King Christian V. visited the Fort in 1685. After that a lot of kings have visited the fort. U'll find their monograms on walls and canons around in the fort. Pic.03 here shows that Norways present king was there 20.06 - 1991. The name Kongsvinger = The Kings Wings. The fort was built as a defence against Sweden that atacked a number of times. Below the forts east side is Glomma, Norways longest river - 604 km long. Here U'll find the last place where it was possible to cross the river without using a boat. Further south there are no such place. The Swedish never crossed the river because of the canonfire from the fort. But matter in facts 6km east of the fort there were battles in 1808 and 1814. Not all buildings are from the first buildingperiod. The small gunpowdertower U see in pic. 15 is from 1682 , but the yellow house behind it is the commanders stable from 1743. The yellow little poster on the red door tells that inside there U'll find toalet for tourists. Pic. 01 and 04 tells u a little bit about how thick the walls are. Pic. 01 is the outher gate that was built later to have a protection before the inner gate U see on pic. 04. In the inner gate U see som hooks in the roof that were used to hang horse-sadles for drying. The forts very thick walls are in two parts with a gap in between. The gap is filled up with sand to be a buffer for the inner part. On pic. 02 U see the guide is wearing an old uniform. It's with a short jacket just like Napolion wanted to have it. Before that they had a long coat. Food and water is very important in a fort so inside this fort U'll find several wells. The main well that looks like a tower in pic. 11, 12 and 13 is the Main well that it took about 100 years to finish. Pic. 16, 17 and 31 is wiev north-east from the fort up the Glomma river. If U follow the river 50km further north-east U'll come to the place were my father grew up. In pic. 20 - 23 U see doors into the wall. Here are rooms that had beds in 2 heights for about 100 soldiers in each room. There were space for about 450 men in all together 4 such rooms. All together it was app. 900 soldiers on the fort. It is very cold in the room so the soldiers were laying tight to keep the warm. Matter in facts many got sick and a lot died - a lot more than the numbers of soldiers that were shot to death. Up to half of the soldiers died of sickness. The flagpole in pic. 28 was for many many years Norways "zeropoint". This was the point where they started when the should make a map. In 1940 the forts commander decided to surrender without any fight. During the occupation of Norway 1940-1945 there were both SS-school and Gestapo-school on Kongsvinger fort. To day it's an important place for the culture in the area. Here are both sometimes teaterplay and concertos.

Unfortunately I haven't been lucky with all the photos, but upload them anyway as a part of the story.

NB!
Last uploaded in the bottom.
If U use F11 on your keyboard U may probably be able to watch these photos in original size.