Editing Balsfjord Municipality (section)

==History==
[[File:Stabben siedi balsfjord.JPG|thumb|left|Stabben: A stone previously used as worship place by the Sami people. Located at Sand.]]
[[File:Balsfjord church.JPG|thumb|left|Balsfjord church.]]
The local inhabitants are descendants of a mixture of Norwegian, Sami and Kven people. Due to the assimilation processes carried out by the Norwegian government, today very few traces of Sami and Kven culture survive. From the 18th century until the 20th century, [[Animal trapping|trappers]] from Balsfjord were active in the [[Arctic]], hunting in areas from [[Greenland]] to [[Novaya Zemlya]].

===Mindekirken movement===
According to the book ''Tromsø City History'' ({{langx|no|Tromsø by Histori}}) written by Nils Andreas Ytreberg (1896–1987) (published in Norwegian), during the mid-19th century, Balsfjord became the religious home of a group of ''"mindekirken"'' or "freechurch dissenters" who split from the [[Church of Norway|state church]] parish in [[Tromsø (city)|Tromsø]]. The mindekirken movement in the Troms region was led by the seminary student, Johannes Andreas Johannessen Bomstad (born at Balsfjord on 23 August 1821), who split from the state church at the age of 28, under the leadership of the first Norwegian mindekirken movement leader, Rev. Lammers from [[Oslo]]. In 1856, Bomstad and his original followers established their own church which they called the ''"Free Apostolic Christian Church"'' in Balsfjord.

''"Rev. Bomstad"'' and his followers were said to have struggled and protested against the Tromsø state church minister and the Troms Bishop's religious rulings, eventually leading to a [[riot]] in the [[Tromsø (city)|town of Tromsø]], when state-church members yelled at Bomstad and his fellow dissenters to "go back to Kautokeino (A small village in the most northern districts of Norway)". In 1862, Bomstad led a group of "mindekirken colonists" to [[United States|America]], traveling first to [[Bergen]], where they sailed in mid-May 1862 aboard the ''Sleipner'', arriving at the inland port of [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]] on 2 August 1862. Their voyage was also noteworthy as the first [[Transatlantic crossing|transatlantic]] voyage sailing directly from [[Europe]] to the port of Chicago (other previous transoceanic ships disembarked first at [[Quebec City]], [[Province of Canada|Canada]].)  After arriving in Chicago, the mindekirken colonists traveled overland to the area of [[St. Peter, Minnesota]], where they remained during the "[[Dakota War of 1862]]".

Rev. Bomstad left St. Peter traveling by [[mule]] to [[Kandiyohi County, Minnesota]], where near the east bank of a lake (previously called ''"Lake Lillian"''), he became the founding father of [[Lake Lillian, Minnesota]] in May 1864 (one hour ahead of the town's next settler, Mr. O.E. Hart, previously of [[New York (state)|New York]]). After staking his original claim, a month later on 3 June 1864, Rev. Bomstad led the rest of the colonists from St. Peter to their new settlement at Lake Lillian, where they built [[Dugout (shelter)|dugout shelters]] to live in that first year (on the site later occupied by the First M.E. Methodist Church of Lake Lillian.) A few months later he and his family finished building and moved into their log cabin home.

[[File:Nordkjosen Balsfjord 14.7.2004.jpg|thumb|none|750px|Balsfjord panorama]]