Counties of Norway


There are 15 counties in Norway. The 15 counties are administrative regions that are the first-level administrative divisions of Norway. The counties are further subdivided into 357 municipalities. The island territories of Svalbard and Jan Mayen are outside the county divisions and they are ruled directly from the national level. The capital city of Oslo is both a county and a municipality.
In 2017, the Solberg government decided to abolish some of the counties and to merge them with other counties to form larger ones, reducing the number of counties from 19 to 11, which was implemented on 1 January 2020. This sparked popular opposition, with some calling for the reform to be reversed. The Storting voted to partly undo the reform on 14 June 2022, with Norway to have 15 counties from 1 January 2024. Three of the newly merged counties, namely Vestfold og Telemark, Viken and Troms og Finnmark, were dissolved and the old counties existing before the reform re-established with a few minor changes as some municipalities merged across former county borders and some switched counties during the 2020 local government reform.

Name

The counties in Norway are called fylke and fylker. This name comes from the Old Norse word which means "district" or "county", but it is similar to the same root as "folk". It is similar in the minority languages in Norway:,,,. Prior to 1918, the counties were known as amt or amter.

List of counties

Below is a list of the Norwegian counties, with their current administrative centres. The counties are administered both by appointees of the national government and by their own elected bodies. The county numbers are from the official numbering system ISO 3166-2:NO, which originally was set up to follow the coastline from the Swedish border in the southeast to the Russian border in the northeast, but with the numbering has changed with county mergers.
The island territories of Svalbard and Jan Mayen lie outside of the county system of Norway. Svalbard is administered by the Governor of Svalbard, and Jan Mayen is administered by the County Governor of Nordland.
CountyISO-codeCapitalMost populous municipalityGovernorMayorArea Pop.Electoral districtCounty governor agencyOfficial language form
OsloNO-03City of OsloOslo MunicipalityIngvild AleksandersenAnne Lindboe 454.12700,000Oslo[List of county governors of Oslo og Viken|Østfold, Buskerud (Storting constituency)|Buskerud, Oslo og Akershus]Neutral
NO-11StavangerStavanger MunicipalityBent HøieMarianne Chesak 9,377.10475,000RogalandRogalandNeutral
NO-15MoldeÅlesund MunicipalityElse-May NorderhusJon Aasen 14,355.62270,000Møre og RomsdalMøre og RomsdalNynorsk
NO-18BodøBodø MunicipalityTom Cato KarlsenKari Anne Bøkestad Andreassen 38,154.62239,000NordlandNordlandNeutral
NO-31SarpsborgFredrikstad MunicipalityIngvild AleksandersenSindre Martinsen-Evje 4,180.7299,647ØstfoldØstfold, Buskerud, Oslo and AkershusNeutral
NO-32OsloBærum MunicipalityIngvild AleksandersenThomas Sjøvold 4,918.0630,752AkershusØstfold, Buskerud, Oslo and AkershusNeutral
NO-33DrammenDrammen MunicipalityIngvild AleksandersenTore Opdal Hansen 14,908.0284,955BuskerudØstfold, Buskerud, Oslo and AkershusNeutral
NO-34HamarRingsaker MunicipalityKnut StorbergetEven Aleksander Hagen 52,072.44375,000Hedmark
Oppland		InnlandetNeutral
VestfoldNO-39TønsbergSandefjord MunicipalityTrond RønningenAnne Strømøy 2,167.7253,555Vestfold[List of county governors of Vestfold (Storting constituency)|Vestfold og Telemark|Vestfold og Telemark]Bokmål
TelemarkNO-40SkienSkien MunicipalityTrond RønningenSven Tore Løkslid 15,298.16175,546TelemarkVestfold and TelemarkNeutral
NO-42KristiansandKristiansand MunicipalityGina LundArne Thomassen 16,434.12299,000Aust-Agder
Vest-Agder		AgderNeutral
NO-46BergenBergen MunicipalityLiv Signe NavarseteJon Askeland 33,870.99632,000Hordaland
Sogn og Fjordane		VestlandNynorsk

Trööndelage		NO-50SteinkjerTrondheim MunicipalityFrank JenssenTomas Iver Hallem 42,201.59465,000Nord-Trøndelag
Sør-Trøndelag		TrøndelagNeutral
NO-55TromsøTromsø MunicipalityElisabeth AspakerKristina Torbergsen 26,189.43168,340TromsTroms og FinnmarkNeutral
NO-56VadsøAlta MunicipalityElisabeth AspakerHans-Jacob Bønå 48,637.4375,540FinnmarkTroms og FinnmarkNeutral

Responsibilities and significance

Every county has two main organisations, both with underlying organisations.
  1. The county municipality has a county council, whose members are elected by the inhabitants. The county municipality is responsible mainly for some medium level schools, public transport organisation, regional road planning, culture, among other things.
  2. The county governor is an authority directly overseen by the Norwegian government. It surveills the municipalities and receives complaints from people over their actions. It also controls areas where the government needs local direct ruling outside the municipalities.

History

''Fylke'' (1st period)

From the consolidation to a single kingdom, Norway was divided into a number of geographic regions that each had its own legislative assembly or Thing, such as Gulating and Frostating. The second-order subdivision of these regions was into fylker, such as Egdafylke and Hordafylke. In 1914, the historical term fylke was brought into use again to replace the term amt introduced during the union with Denmark. Current day counties often, but not necessarily, correspond to the historical areas.

''Fylke'' in the 10th–13th centuries

Counties under the Borgarting, located in Viken with the seat at Sarpsborg:
Counties under the Eidsivating, located in Oplandene with the seat at Eidsvoll:
Counties under the Gulating, located in Vestlandet with the seat at Gulen Municipality:
Counties under the Frostating, located in Trøndelag with the seat at Frosta:
Counties not attached to a thing:
Finnmark, the Faroe Islands, the Orkney Islands, Shetland, the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, Iceland and Greenland were Norwegian skattland, and did not belong to any known counties or assembly areas.

''Syssel''

''Syssel'' in 1300

From the end of the 12th century, Norway was divided into several syssel. The head of the syssel was the syslemann, who represented the king locally. The following shows a reconstruction of the different syssel in Norway c. 1300, including sub-syssel where these seem established.

''Len''

From 1308, the term len in Norway signified an administrative region roughly equivalent to today's counties. The historic len was an important administrative entity during the period of Dano-Norwegian unification after their amalgamation as one state, which lasted for the period 1536–1814.
At the beginning of the 16th century the political divisions were variable, but consistently included four main len and approximately 30 smaller sub-regions with varying connections to a main len. Up to 1660 the four principal len were headquartered at the major fortresses Bohus Fortress, Akershus Fortress, Bergenhus Fortress and the fortified city of Trondheim. The sub-regions corresponded to the church districts for the Lutheran church in Norway.

''Len'' in 1536

These four principal len were in the 1530s divided into approximately 30 smaller regions. From that point forward through the beginning of the 17th century the number of subsidiary len was reduced, while the composition of the principal len became more stable.

''Len'' in 1660

From 1660 Norway had nine principal len comprising 17 subsidiary len:
Len written as län continues to be used as the administrative equivalent of county in Sweden to this day. Each len was governed by a lenman.

''Amt''

With the royal decree of 19 February 1662, each len was designated an amt and the lenmann was titled amtmann, from German Amt, reflecting the bias of the Danish court of that period.

''Amt'' in 1671

After 1671 Norway was divided into four principal amt or stiftsamt and there were nine subordinate amt:
  • Akershus amt
  • *Smålenene amt
  • *Brunla amt
  • Agdesiden amt
  • *Bratsberg amt
  • *Stavanger amt
  • Bergenhus amt
  • *Halsnøy klostergods
  • *Hardanger amt
  • *Nordlandene amt
  • Trondheim amt
  • *Romsdalen amt
  • *Vardøhus amt

''Amt'' in 1730

From 1730 Norway had the following amt:
  • Vardøhus amt
  • Tromsø amt
  • Nordlands amt
  • Nordre Trondhjems amt
  • Søndre Trondhjems amt
  • Romsdalen amt
  • Nordre Bergenhus amt
  • Søndre Bergenhus amt
  • Stavanger amt
  • Lister og Mandals amt
  • Nedenes amt
  • Bratsberg amt
  • Buskerud amt
  • Oplandenes amt
  • Hedemarkens amt
  • Akershus amt
  • Smaalenenes amt
At this time there were also two counties controlled by actual counts, together forming what is now Vestfold county:
  • Laurvigen county
  • Jarlsberg county

''Amt'' in 1760

In 1760 Norway had the following stiftamt and amt:
  • Akershus stiftamt
  • *Opplands amt
  • *Akershus amt
  • *Smålenenes amt
  • *Laurvigen county
  • *Jarlsberg county
  • *Bratsberg amt
  • Agdesiden stiftamt
  • *Bratsberg amt
  • *Nedenes amt
  • *Lister and Mandal amt
  • *Stavanger amt
  • Bergenhus stiftamt
  • *Romsdal amt
  • Trondheim stiftamt
  • *Romsdal amt
  • *Nordlands amt
  • *Vardøhus amt

''Fylke'' (2nd period)

From 1919 each amt was renamed a fylke and the amtmann was now titled fylkesmann.
The county numbers are from the official numbering system ISO 3166-2:NO, which originally was set up to follow the coastline from the Swedish border in the southeast to the Russian border in the northeast, but the numbering has changed with county mergers. The number 13, 16 and 17 were dropped, and the number 50 was added to account for changes over the years. The lack of a county number 13 is due to the city of Bergen no longer being its own county, and is unrelated to fear of the number 13.
In 2018, Sør-Trøndelag was merged with Nord-Trøndelag into the new county of Trøndelag, and several followed.

''Fylke'' (3rd period)

In 2017, the Norwegian government announced the merge of the existing 19 fylker into 11 new fylker by 2020. As a result, several government responsibilities were transferred to the new regions.
; New counties