Askome () is a village and former parish in

Falkenberg Municipality Falkenberg Municipality () is a municipality in Halland County on the Swedish west coast. The town Falkenberg is the municipal seat. The municipality was created in 1971 when the ''City of Falkenberg'' was amalgamated with six rural municipalit ...

Halland County Halland County (, ) is a county ('' län'') on the western coast of Sweden. It corresponds roughly to the cultural and historical province of Halland. The capital is Halmstad. Prince Julian, the son of Prince Carl Philip, is Duke of Halland. ...

Geography and geology

Askome is situated at the eastern bank of the river Ätran. The parish had an area of 32.82 km², of which 31.16 km² was land. The parish was delimited by the river to then north and the west, except for a small area that used to be an

ait An ait (, like ''eight'') or eyot () is a small island. It is especially used to refer to river islands found on the River Thames and its tributaries in England. Aits are typically formed by the deposit of sediment in the water, which accumu ...

. The island belonged to

Ljungby Ljungby () is the Urban areas in Sweden, central locality of Ljungby Municipality, Kronoberg County, Sweden, with 15,785 inhabitants in 2015. Ljungby was instituted in 1829 as a ''köping'', or ''market town'', and did not become a municipality o ...

, and still does so, even though it is now on the "wrong" side of the river. The parish bordered Vessige in the south and Gällared and Krogsered in the north and north east. The cultivated land is mainly along river Ätran and downstream Ätrafors, while the remainder is forested. The bedrock consists of

gneiss Gneiss (pronounced ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. This rock is formed under p ...

. The forested area is dominated by

till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

, while the cultivated areas consists of

gravel Gravel () is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel occurs naturally on Earth as a result of sedimentation, sedimentary and erosion, erosive geological processes; it is also produced in large quantities commercially as crushed stone. Gr ...

and

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

. The area is comparatively hilly, the highest hill being ''Askome berg'' at 172 meter over sealeval, while the lowest point is along the river, at 20 meter over sealevel.

History

Several flint object has been found in Askome, but no

Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistory, prehistoric period during which Rock (geology), stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended b ...

graves. The remains from the Bronze Age is also sparse compared to surrounding areas. The main Iron Age remains are a centrally located

stone circle A stone circle is a ring of megalithic standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being ...

and urn field, as well as two

menhir A menhir (; from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the European middle Br ...

s at Askome field. Askome belonged to

Årstad hundred Årstad Hundred () was a hundred in central Halland in southern Sweden. Parishes The hundred was divided into the following parishes:{{Cite web, url=http://www.ddss.nu/maps/parishInfo?parish=%C3%85rstad+H%C3%A4rad&county=H, title=Årstad Härad ...

. The name consists of two parts, ''ask'' and ''ome''. Ask comes from ash, while ''ome'' means home and is common in hallandic placenames, in particular in vicinity of the village. The name is first mentioned in 1523. Letters from the following decades show that the village came to belong to Hjuleberg. The current church was built in 1780 and a tower was added in 1804. The parish was merged with Alfshög and Vessigebro parishes in 2006 to form a new parish, Vessige. The old parish had about 200 inhabitants.

References

* * {{Coord, 57, 1, 3.4, N, 12, 40, 14.7, E, region:SE_type:city, display=title Falkenberg Municipality