Forty-five thousand soldiers of the Roman army destroyed the major centre of the Chatti, Mattium,[3] directly after they crossed the Adrana (Eder).

[11] Up to the 1970s, school children from Duisburg, who stayed at a nearby holiday camp, together with a teacher from Marienhagen, part of the town of Vöhl, went panning for gold in the sediments of the River Itter.

However, unlike the Lahn and Sieg, which are both tributaries of the Rhine, the Eder flows east and north, into the river Fulda at Edermünde, south of Kassel.

[13] It forms the Edersee lake, which is 27 kilometres (17 mi) long and contains 200 million cubic metres of water.

This is used to generate hydroelectricity and to regulate water levels for shipping on the Weser river.

At low water in late summer, and during dry years, the remnants of three villages (Asel, Bringhausen, and Berich) and a bridge across the original river bed, which was submerged when the lake was filled in 1914, can be seen.

On the night of the 17 May 1943, Avro Lancaster bombers of the RAF 617 Squadron used specially-developed bouncing bombs (codename: Upkeep) that were engineered by Barnes Wallis.