Mære is a village in

Steinkjer Municipality or is a municipality in Trøndelag Counties of Norway, county, Norway. It is part of the Innherad Districts of Norway, region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the Steinkjer (town), town of Steinkjer which is located on the inne ...

Trøndelag Trøndelag (; or is a county and coextensive with the Trøndelag region (also known as ''Midt-Norge'' or ''Midt-Noreg,'' "Mid-Norway") in the central part of Norway. It was created in 1687, then named Trondhjem County (); in 1804 the county was ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. It is located along

European route E6 European route E6 (, , or simply E6) is the main north–south thoroughfare through Norway as well as the west coast of Sweden. It is long and runs from the southern tip of Sweden at Trelleborg, into Norway and through almost all of the countr ...

and the

Nordlandsbanen The Nordland Line (, ) is a railway line between Trondheim and Bodø, Norway. It is the longest in Norway and lacks electrification. The route runs through Trøndelag and Nordland counties, carrying a combination of commuter, long-haul passenge ...

railway line, about south of the town of Steinkjer. The village of

Sparbu Sparbu is a village in Steinkjer Municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. The village is located about south of the town of Steinkjer. The European route E6 highway runs through the village as does the Nordlandsbanen railway line which stop ...

lies about south of Mære.

Mære Church Mære Church () is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Steinkjer Municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is located in the village of Mære. It is the church for the Mære parish which is part of the Stiklestad prosti (deanery) in ...

is located in this village as well. The village has a population (2024) of 437 and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geog ...

of .

History

In the early

Viking Age The Viking Age (about ) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their ...

, according to the

Sagas Sagas are prose stories and histories, composed in Iceland and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Scandinavia. The most famous saga-genre is the (sagas concerning Icelanders), which feature Viking voyages, migration to Iceland, and feuds between ...

, Mære was one of the most important religious ceremonial places, with sacrifices to the

Norse gods Norse is a demonym for Norsemen, a Medieval North Germanic ethnolinguistic group ancestral to modern Scandinavians, defined as speakers of Old Norse from about the 9th to the 13th centuries. Norse may also refer to: Culture and religion * Nors ...

. Under the medieval church at Mære, traces of preceding

heathen hof A heathen hof or Germanic pagan temple is a temple building of Germanic religion (aboriginal), Germanic religion. The term ''hof'' is taken from Old Norse. Background Etymologically, the Old Norse word ''hof'' is the same as the Dutch language, ...

were found in archeological investigations during the 1960s, the only case in Norway so far of a pre-Christian building being found to have existed on the site of a church.

References

Villages in Trøndelag Steinkjer {{Trøndelag-geo-stub