Battle of Hegra Fortress

The Battle of Hegra Fortress was a 25-day engagement in the 1940 Norwegian Campaign which saw a small force of Norwegian volunteers fighting numerically superior German forces from a fortified position. After initial fighting around the Meråker Line railway line, the Norwegians pulled back into Hegra Fortress and held off further German attacks before surrendering on 5 May as one of the last Norwegian units active in southern Norway.
Opposing forces.
Norwegian force.
The Norwegian defenders were 250 volunteer soldiers and the volunteer nurse Anne Margrethe Bang. Most of the volunteers that served at Hegra were from the area Hegra/Stjørdal/Trondheim, but they also included three Swedes.
The garrison at Hegra was equipped with small arms (Krag-Jørgensen rifles and carbines), as well as Madsen and Colt M/29 machine guns.
The fortress also had artillery, four and two positional pieces of reasonably modern make with gun shields; as well as four Krupp m/1887 field guns. The artillery had a maximum range of between six and nine kilometres.
Many of these men had been mobilized to Artillery Regiment no. 3 at Øyanmoen army camp at Værnes Air Station and were brought to Hegra to continue the mobilization after the Germans had reached their camp. The fortress at Hegra was originally only intended as a temporary refuge for the artillery regiment, but ended up as the centre of the volunteers' war in 1940.
German force.

Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola

Verbano-Cusio-Ossola (Italian: Provincia del Verbano Cusio Ossola ) is the northernmost province in the Italian region of Piedmont. It was created in 1992 through the fusion of three geographical areas which had previously been part of the Province of Novara. The area flanking the western shore of Verbano (or Lago Maggiore) forms the eastern part of the province; Cusio (or Lago d’Orta) and its environs form the southern part; while the north and west of the province consists of the Ossola, a region of Alpine mountains and valleys. The for the province is VB.
The province has a total population of some 160,000, distributed over an area of , with the biggest population centres being its capital Verbania on the shores of Lago Maggiore, Domodossola the main town of the Ossola, and Omegna at the northern end of Lago d’Orta.
Municipal subdivisions.
There are 74 "comuni" in the province. The largest by population are:
Culture.
UNESCO Sacred Mountains.
In 2003, the Sacred Mountain of Domodossola and the Sacred Mountain of Ghiffa were inserted by UNESCO in the World Heritage List.
Demographics.
The top eight countries of origin of the inhabitants of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola with foreign citizenship at December 31, 2010 were: