Counties of Norway


is divided into 11 administrative regions, called counties / fylke until 1918, they were known as amter. The counties form the first-level subdivisions of Norway and are further divided into 356 municipalities. The island territories of Svalbard and Jan Mayen are outside the county division and ruled directly at the national level. The capital Oslo is considered both a county and a municipality.
In 2017 the 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 January 1, 2020.

List of counties

Below is a list of the Norwegian counties, with their current administrative centres. Note that the counties are administered both by appointees of the national government and to a lesser extent by their own elected bodies. The county numbers are from the official numbering system, 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.

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 and some more areas.
  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 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:
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, 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 various 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.
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 February 19, 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:
From 1730 Norway had the following amt:
At this time there were also two counties controlled by actual counts, together forming what is now Vestfold county:
In 1760 Norway had the following stiftamt and amt:
From 1919 each amt was renamed a fylke and the amtmann was now titled fylkesmann.
The county numbers are from the official numbering system, 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 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.
ISO-codeCountyAdministrative centreArea Population County
after 1 January 2020
01Sarpsborg4,180.69290,412 Viken
02Oslo4,917.94596,704 Viken
06Drammen14,910.94278,028 Viken
03City of Oslo454.07660,987 Oslo
04Hamar27,397.76195,443 Innlandet
05Lillehammer25,192.10188,945 Innlandet
07Tønsberg2,225.08245,160 Vestfold og Telemark
08Skien15,296.34172,527 Vestfold og Telemark
09Arendal9,157.77115,873 Agder
10Kristiansand7,276.91182,922 Agder
11Stavanger9,375.97470,907 Rogaland
12Bergen15,438.06517,601 Vestland
13Not in use from 1972 and onwards --- Vestland
14Hermansverk18,623.41109,623 Vestland
15Molde15,101.39265,181 Møre og Romsdal
16Not in use from 2018 and onwards ---
17Not in use from 2018 and onwards ---
18Bodø38,482.39241,948 Nordland
19Tromsø25,862.91164,613 Troms og Finnmark
20Vadsø48,631.0475,886 Troms og Finnmark
50 Steinkjer41,254.29450,496 Trøndelag

''Fylke'' (3rd period)

In 2017 the Norwegian government announced the merge of the existing 19 fylker into 11 fylkeskommuner by 2020. As a result, several government tasks will be transferred to the new regions.
;New fylkeskommuner