The French Government that controlled the area that later became Belgium in the last years of the 18th and early 19th century, had extended Limburg, which since then comprises the minor part of the Hageland at the city of Halen.
The name refers to land with dense (low) forest and/or undergrowth.
[2] The ridge that includes the 106-metre-high Molenberg hill at the village of Pellenberg forms the southern border of the Hageland, and the Velp, a tributary of the Demer, limits its southeast.
[3] Touristic publications of Hageland often erroneously include a landscape of Flemish Brabant that lies to the south-east of it, which geophysically rather belongs to the drylands (Tienen, Hoegaarden, Landen) and wetlands (Zoutleeuw) region of Hesbaye (in Dutch Haspengouw).
Another tributary, the Gete, is the eastern and the river Demer itself the northern border of Hageland.