Son is an old town, and a former municipality. It is located in

Vestby Vestby is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Follo traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Vestby. General information Name The municipality (originally the parish) is nam ...

municipality in

Akershus Akershus () is a county in Norway, with Oslo as its administrative centre, though Oslo is not located within Akershus. Akershus has been a region in Eastern Norway with Oslo as its main city since the Middle Ages, and is named after the Akers ...

Overview

Son is located at the

Oslofjord The Oslofjord (, ; ) is an inlet in southeastern Norway. The fjord begins at the small village of Bonn in Frogn, Frogn Municipality and stretching northwards to the city of Oslo, and then curving to the east and then south again. It then flows s ...

, 50 kilometres south of the Norwegian capital Oslo, just north of

Moss Mosses are small, non-vascular plant, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic phylum, division Bryophyta (, ) ''sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Wilhelm Philippe Schimper, Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryo ...

and near the border of

Østfold Østfold () is a county in Eastern Norway, which from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2023 was part of Viken. Østfold borders Akershus and southwestern Sweden (Västra Götaland County and Värmland), while Buskerud and Vestfold are on the other ...

, and is located west of the village of Hølen. Before the merge with Vestby the number of inhabitants in Son was about 800–900 (1940). Today, Son, including Store Brevik has 5035 inhabitants (2006). Son, together with the village of Hølen, was established as a municipality January 1, 1838 (see

formannskapsdistrikt () was the name of a Norwegian self-governing municipality. The name was used from the establishment these municipalities in 1838 until the name fell out of use in 1863. The municipalities had their legal basis from two laws enacted on 14 Jan ...

). Son and Hølen were separated as municipalities of their own January 1, 1848. On January 1, 1964, Son was merged with Vestby and then lost its status as a town (ladested).A small town community
www.herison.no

History

In the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

era, Son became famous as a harbour. Timber came from the nearby areas and was partially floated down the river. On many Dutch maps from that time (the oldest being from 1582) the Oslo fjord is noted as ''Zoon Water''. However, when this period ended, Son lost much of its importance. Later, Son became known as an 'artist town', as many well-known painters and writers have resided there.

The name

The name Son is pronounced with a long > u:n ''Son'' is probably the old name of the river Hølenselva ( Norse ''*Són''). Some distance up this river lies the parish Såner ( Norse ''Sánar''), and this name is most likely the

plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

of ''*Són''. In Norse literature is the word ''són'' used as a poetic word for

blood Blood is a body fluid in the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells. Blood is com ...

, and it is probably an old word for

liquid Liquid is a state of matter with a definite volume but no fixed shape. Liquids adapt to the shape of their container and are nearly incompressible, maintaining their volume even under pressure. The density of a liquid is usually close to th ...

. Until 1889 the name was written ''Soon''.

Notable people

References

SonNorway - The Place without Mondays
Former cities in Norway Former municipalities of Norway Populated places in Akershus Villages in Akershus Vestby {{Akershus-geo-stub