Ommen (ˈɔmə(n)) is a municipality and a Hanseatic city in the eastern Netherlands. It is located in the Vecht valley of the Salland region in Overijssel. Historical records first name Ommen in the early 12th century and it was officially founded as a city in 1248. The municipality had a population of in and covers an area of .
Besides the city of Ommen (population: 8,710) and the town of Lemele (population: 570), the municipality consists of the following hamlets and villages:
The first inhabitants of the area around Ommen were probably semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. Flint from the Mesolithic period found in between Ommen and Mariënberg indicates the presence of humans around 9,000 BCE, but there seems to have been hardly any cultivation or permanent settlement during this period.
The Vecht (sometimes called the Overijsselse Vecht, to avoid confusion with its namesake in Utrecht) and Regge rivers determined the first settlements in the area that is now the municipality of Ommen. Most of the Salland region was marshy but the higher banks along the Vecht and Regge provided fertile soil for agriculture. Moreover, good roads were rare, so for trade, transport and travel the rivers provided a vital infrastructure. The first sporadic agricultural settlements in Salland therefore arose along the riverbanks of the Vecht and the Regge around 5,000 BCE. Indeed, all early population centres in the current municipality of Ommen were originally built on riverbanks — with the exception of the town of Lemele, which was situated on the lower slopes of the Lemelerberg, free from flooding by the Regge.
The location of Ommen itself proved particularly suitable for settlement — not only because of the fertile river soil and the higher ground of the river dune (even today the church square is visibly higher than the streets to its east and south), but also because of the ford in the Vecht facilitating trade routes between the Frisian north and Twente to the south.
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Deventer (ˈdeːvəntər; Sallands: Daeventer) is a city and municipality in the Salland historical region of the province of Overijssel, Netherlands. In 2020, Deventer had a population of 100,913. The city is largely situated on the east bank of the river IJssel, but it also has a small part of its territory on the west bank. In 2005 the municipality of Bathmen (with a population of about 5,000 people) was merged with Deventer as part of a national effort to reduce bureaucracy in the country.
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