The municipality was established on 1 January 1877 when the old municipality of Evje og Vegusdal was divided into Vegusdal (population: 935) in the east and Evje (population: 870) in the west. In 1900, the municipality had 985 inhabitants distributed among 141 farms. During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1967, Vegusdal (population: 582) was merged with the neighboring municipalities of Birkenes (population: 1,883) and Herefoss (population: 585) to form a new, larger municipality of Birkenes.[4]
Name
The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old Vegusdal farm (Old Norse: Veikolfsdalr) since the first Vegusdal Church was built there. The first element is derived from the old male name, Veikolfr. The male name itself was a compound name with the first component Veik- coming from veikr which means "weak" and the second component -olfr was a variant form of the more common male name Úlfr (also spelled Ulfr, from Old Norse úlfr, ulfr "wolf"; cf. Icelandic Úlfur and Faroese Úlvur). The last element of the name is dalr which means "valley" or "dale". Thus this is the "valley of Weak-Ulfr (or Weak-Wolf)".[5]
The municipal council(Herredsstyre) of Vegusdal was made up of 13 representatives that were elected to four year terms. The tables below show the historical composition of the council by political party.
