10 Online Maps of Norway

10 online maps of Norway, including Svalbard, Bjørnøya and Jan Mayen as well as city-maps of Oslo and Bergen.



Political Map of Norway and Scandinavia
PDF-version



Map of Norway and surrounding countries
PDF-version



Map of Svalbard from 1970




Detailed map of Oslo in pdf-format



Map of Bjørnøya (Bear Island)



Interactive road-map of Norway



Topographic map of Svalbard



City-map of Bergen


Historical map of Norway from 1662


Map of Jan Mayen

Polar ice cap melting away in 2008 ?

How low will they go? Putting a date on the melting of the Arctic ice cap has been a popular prediction game among scientists of late; in recent months, we've heard estimates ranging from 2030 to as early as 2013.



The latest salvo comes courtesy of Xinhua, which reports that Olav Orheim, the head of the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat, is placing his money on this summer. Noting that its ice sheet had reached a historical low of 3m sq. km last summer - it covered around 7.5m sq. km as recently as 2000 - Orheim told Xinhua that "if Norway's average temperature this year equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away." Barring this disaster, Orheim predicted that excess carbon dioxide emissions and higher average temperatures would unpredictably alter the region's fragile ecosystems. On a separate note, he said that Asia would likely be hardest hit by rising sea levels, estimating that a one meter rise would affect "nearly 100 million people on an area of 800,000 square km in Asia and direct economic loss will amount to 400 billion U.S. dollars."



Shrinking ice cap in the Arctic Ocean even produced a new sea route from the Bering Strait to Oslo last summer, said Orheim. Maritime enterprises in some industrial nations such as the UnitedStates and Britain have started mulling on how to use it to cut cost over the past six months, he added.

Olav Orheim

Dr. Olav Orheim is a distinguished glaciologist, climatologist and polar expert who has spent more than thirty years studying the effects of global warming. Dr. Orheim, was Head of Research at the Norwegian Polar Institute's (NPI) Antarctic Section from 1972 to 1993, before becoming the NPI's Managing Director. Alongside his work with the NPI he was a Professor at the University of Bergen's Department of Geology from 1989-2005, where he specialised in glaciology. He is currently Executive Secretary of the Norwegian International Polar Year.

A renowned authority on climate change and its effects on the planet's poles, Dr Orheim is currently Senior Adviser to the Norwegian Ministry of Environment.

Eat whale and save the world

Eating whale meat is far better for the climate than eating other types of meat. That’s the conclusion of a new, groundbreaking study.



“People can eat whale meat with a good conscience,” says Rune Frovik of the High North Alliance, which has conducted the study.

Norway and Japan, the two main whaling nations, are seeking new arguments to promote whale meat after years of condemnation from anti-whaling nations for breaking with a 1986 moratorium on all hunts meant to save many whale species from extinction.

The study compared the carbon foot print of Norwegian minke whale meat and farm raised meat. It found that the carbon foot print of beef was eight times higher than that of whale meat. “Put simply, one meal of beef emits the same amount of greenhouse gases as eight meals of whale meat,” says Frovik.

When expressing greenhouse gas emissions as CO2 equivalents, whale meat ends up with 1.9 kg per CO2 equivalents while the corresponding values are 17.4 for lamb, 15.8 for beef, 6.4 for pork and 4.6 for chicken.

The CO2 equivalents for other types of meat were done through other studies.

Greenpeace said the threat of extinction was more important.

"The survival of a species is more important than lower greenhouse gas emissions from eating it," said Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace. "Almost every food is more climate friendly than meat.
Most fish and seafood has similarly low emissions."

The High North Alliance has for years argued that abundant whale stocks make whale meat a sustainable and ecological sound option. International scientists estimate that there are more than 100,000 minke whales in the areas where the Norwegian commercial whale hunt takes place.

“Now it is also confirmed that whale meat is low carbon and good for the climate,” Frovik says.

A transfer to green taxes in which the real costs associated with climate change emissions are incorporated in the real consumer prices may strengthen the economic competition of low-carbon items.

“With increasing environmental awareness, coupled with abundant whale stocks, the future for whaling looks bright,” he says.

Further information:
Study on the carbon foot print of whale meat

Norwegian field station dissapeard

The Norwegian Polar Institute’s field station on Bouvetøya (Bouvet Island) is no longer to be seen on satellite images, and scientists are now working on the theory that it has been taken by a landslide and driven out in the ocean.



The unmanned field station is located on the most remote island on the planet, in the South Atlantic Ocean. By a Royal Norwegian Decree of January 23, 1928, Bouvetøya became a Norwegian Territory. In 1929, Riiser Larsen, the famous explorer, flew over the island several times when the Norvegia called again to collect specimens. As on their first visit, stores were landed for the assistance of shipwrecked sailors, this time at Larsøya. The Discovery, under Sir Douglas Mawson with a South African Meteorologist (S. A. Engelbrecht) called later in 1929, but found conditions too hostile to establish a weather station. On a subsequent visit by the Norvegia, both of the huts they had established had disappeared.



Norwegian scientists have regular field stays on Bouvetøya to study foraging strategies and distribution of fur seals and penguins. The monitoring is part of the international programme CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring System (CEMP) for the Antarctic marine ecosystem and has high priority within Norwegian Antarctic research. The last time scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute worked on the island was in 2001, but during the Antarctic expedition in 2003/2004, expedition members from the Norwegian Polar Institute visited the island briefly.



Read the report from the scientists’ current stay

As a curiosity: Bouvet was the setting of the 2004 movie Alien vs. Predator, in which it is referred to using its Norwegian name "Bouvetøya".

Despite being uninhabited, Bouvet Island has the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .bv, though it is not used. A handful of amateur radio expeditions have gone to this remote location (call signs used here begin with 3Y). There is no telephone country code or area code, and no telephone connection (except by satellite, but there is nothing installed). There is no postal code and no postal distribution. Ships appoaching the Bouvet Island falls within the UTC Z time zone. There is a Norwegian law saying that the time zone of Norwegian territory is UTC+1, except for a part of year (daylight saving time). This means that the legal time zone is UTC+1 for the Bouvet Island, like Jan Mayen which is located in the UTC-1 nautical time zone, but also has UTC+1.

Guarding the Arctic Gate

Annually the Norwegian Coast Guard control more than 3000 vessels in the economic zone around the Norwegian mainland, Svalbard and Jan Mayen. Around 70 percent of the Coast Guard’s resources are used on inspections; other tasks are in the areas of exercise of sovereignty, search and rescue preparedness, ambulance service and assistance to the fishing fleet.



KV Harstad

The personnel of the vessels consist of naval officers, conscripts and civilians. Coast Guard officers undergo a different training than the rest of the Norwegian Naval Forces. A Coast Guard officer has to be familiar with the various acts, laws and regulations, which regulate the various tasks the Coast Guard has in accordance with the Coast Guard Act. A large part of the education is based on fisheries regulations, but also a necessary understanding of all the other laws has to be established. As a Coast Guard officer you must be able to balance between being a military officer, civilian authority and police officer. On the vessels there are also civilian navigators and crew that are working there as a consequence of a unique military/civilian partnership. Some of the ships of the Norwegian Coast Guard have been hired from ship owners on a ten-year lease.
The commanding officer of the ship is military but the day-to-day running and maintenance of the ship is the duty of the civilian ship owner. A structure like this makes it possible to conduct better economic analysis and control over future expenses.



Ongoing inspection

All the Coast Guard vessels are continuously on patrol, operated by two separate crews. Each crew is on patrol for three weeks followed by 32 hours at the base for debriefing, crew change, refueling, supplying and briefing of the relieving crew before the next three weeks patrol. The philosophy is to ensure presence at sea with required capabilities. This means that the main goal of the Coast Guard is to have the ships and A/C, the required expertise, and the necessary authority where they are needed at sea at all times.



KV Svalbard

The Royal Norwegian Navy offshore patrol vessel KV Svalbard was constructed by Langsten AG at Tangen Verft shipyard in Krageroe and launched on February 17, 2001. She was christened December 15 in Tomrefjord with Minister of Defence Kristin Krohn Devold as godmother, and delivered to the Kystvakt on January 18, 2002. She entered service mid-2002 and is homeported in Sortland. Her primary operating area is in the Arctic waters north of Norway, the Barents Sea and around the Svalbard islands.

General Characteristics

* Missions:

- fishery inspection
- enforcement of sovereignty
- search and rescue
- environmental protection
- research and expedition support

* Displacement: 6500 tons
* Length: 103.7 meters overall, 89.0 meters waterline
* Beam: 19.1 meters
* Height: 8.3 meters
* Draft 6.5 meters
* Power: four 3390 kilowatt BRG-8 diesel generators
* Propulsion: two five-megawatt Azipod electric thrusters
* Aircraft: capacity for two helicopters; one Lynx carried initially



The Norwegian Economic Zone