View of Tolga Church, the main church for the municipality
Historically, the municipality of Tolga had always included Os until 1926 when Os had become the separate municipality of Os. During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1966, the neighboring municipalities of Tolga (population: 1,944) and Os (population: 2,015) were merged to form the new municipality of Tolga-Os. Soon after the merger, there was discontent in the new municipality. On 10 April 1975, the government allowed the merger to be dissolved, so on 1 January 1976 Tolga (population: 1,865) and Os (population: 1,859) became separate municipalities once again using the pre-1966 borders.[3][4][5]
Name
The municipal name was created during the 1960s (and in use until 1976) for the newly merged municipality that was made up of the old municipalities of Tolga and Os. The name was simply a hyphenated combination of the two old names. The first name comes from the old Tolga farm since the first Tolga Church was built there (in 1688). This name comes from the small river which flows through the area (now known as the river Tolja). The name of the river may come from the word toll (Old Norse: þǫll which means "young pine tree".[6] The second name comes from the old Os farm (Old Norse: Óss) since the first Os Church was built there in 1703. The name is identical with the word óss which means "mouth of a river" (here it is referring to the Vangrøfta river running out into the Glomma river).[7]
The municipal council(Kommunestyre) of Tolga-Os was made up of 25 representatives that were elected to four year terms. The party breakdown of the final municipal council was as follows:
Note: This first council for Tolga-Os was established in 1966 and it was made up of the existing councils from the old municipalities of Tolga and Os that took office in 1964.
