Asker is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Viken traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Asker. The municipality is a suburb of Oslo, the national capital. Asker was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt).
Name
The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old Asker farm, since the first church was built here. The name (Old Norse: Askar) is the plural form of ask which means "ash tree".
Coat-of-arms
The coat-of-arms is from modern times. They were granted on 7 October 1975. The arms show a green background with three silver-colored tree trunks (Norwegian:askekaller) and are thus canting arms. The trees are ashes, which were cropped every year to provide food for the animals. The trees thus developed after many years a very typical shape, which was characteristic for the area
