AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Engeren—known locally as Engersjøen and shown on older maps in the Danish-influenced spelling Enger-Vand—is a long, narrow mountain lake set in the wide, wild interior of Innlandet, straddling the boundary between Engerdal and Trysil municipalities near the Swedish border. Running about 17 kilometres end to end yet rarely wider than a kilometre, it has the slender, deep character of a fjord without the sea, its clear cold water lying at 472 metres above sea level and reaching depths of around 80 metres.↗↗↗
This is a lake for slow, outdoors-minded travel rather than a ticketed sight: a place to swim from natural shores, to fish the water and the river that drains it, and to climb a heath-topped ridge for a classic view over the whole narrow basin. County Road 26 hugs its eastern bank, making the lakeside easy to reach by car, while the steep, unsettled western shore keeps the water quiet and the horizon clean.↗↗
A Fjord Without the Sea
The very name tells you what kind of water this is. Linguists trace "Enger" back to the Old Norse word for narrow, and the lake lives up to it: an elongated, deep basin that reads like a fjord carved into the mountains, some 11.5 square kilometres of surface stretched thin over its 17-kilometre length. The main inflow and outflow is the river Engeråa, which enters at the northern village of Heggeriset and leaves at the southern end before joining the Trysilelva just beyond, so the lake sits on a living watercourse rather than in a stagnant hollow.
