The low ridge is situated in the northern foothills of the Harz mountain range, stretching southeast of the Innerste Uplands from the Salzgitter Hills to the Oker river.

The southeastern edge of the ridge lies immediately above the Oker Valley and from 1203 was the construction site of an Imperial castle, built during the German throne quarrel between the Welf and Hohenstaufen dynasties.

It was erected at the behest of by the Welf king Otto of Brunswick to control the trade route to the Imperial City of Goslar, whose citizens had allied with his rival Philip of Swabia.

At the 1290 Imperial diet in Erfurt, the Hildesheim prince-bishop Siegfried II of Querfurt accused Duke Henry I of Brunswick of using its favourable location for ambushes and highway robberies of bypassing merchants.

A vestige of former mining activity in the area is the historic Vienenburg potash works and fertilizer plant with its old shafts: numbers I, II and III.