Below is a list of towns and cities in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

. The Norwegian word for

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an o ...

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

is ''by''. Cities were formerly categorized as ''

kjøpstad A (historically: ''kjøbstad'', ''kjöbstad'', or ''kaupstad'') is an old Scandinavian term for a " market town" that was used in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway for several hundred years. The name comes from the on, kaupstaðr. Kjøpstads wer ...

'' (

market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...

) or '' ladested'' (small seaport), each with special

rights Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory ...

. The special trading rights for cities were abolished in 1857, and the classification was entirely rescinded in 1952 and replaced by the simple classification ''by''.

Overview

From 1 January 1965 the focus was moved from the individual cities to their corresponding municipalities. Norwegian municipalities were classified as ''bykommune'' (urban municipality) or ''herredskommune'' (rural municipality). The distinction was rescinded by The Local Government Act of 1992. The municipalities were ordered by so-called municipality numbers, four-digit codes based on ISO 3166-2:NO which in 1946 were assigned to each municipality. Urban municipalities got a municipality number in which the third digit was a zero. Between 1960 and 1965 many Norwegian municipalities were merged. For instance when the urban municipality Brevik merged with the urban municipality

Porsgrunn is a city and municipality in Telemark in the county of Vestfold og Telemark in Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Grenland. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Porsgrunn. The municipality of Porsgrun ...

and the rural municipality Eidanger, the new municipality was called Porsgrunn and retained its municipality number. As a result, Brevik was no longer considered an urban municipality/town. On another note, when the urban municipality Hønefoss was merged with the rural municipalities Hole, Norderhov,

Tyristrand Tyristrand is a village in Ringerike municipality in Buskerud county, Norway. Background Tyristrand parish was designated a municipality following a split from Hole on 1 July 1916. The municipality of Hole made been established on 1 January 1 ...

and Ådal to form the new municipality Ringerike, Ringerike retained the old municipality number of Hønefoss. The same thing happened to Egersund and Florø. Before 1996, the ''city status'' was awarded by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development. Now the issue is decided by each municipality council and is formally accepted by the state. Since 1997 a municipality must have a minimum of 5,000 inhabitants in order to declare city status for one of its settlements. In 1999 the municipality council of

Bardu Bardu ( sme, Bearddu suohkan, fkv, Perttulan komuuni) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Setermoen, the largest urban area in the municipality. The munici ...

declared city status for

Setermoen Setermoen is the administrative centre of Bardu Municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The village is located along the Barduelva river, about east of the village of Sjøvegan and about south of Bardufoss. The local council procla ...

, only to be rejected because the municipality fell short of the population limit. One exception is Honningsvåg in Nordkapp, where the municipality actually has less than 5,000 inhabitants but declared city status before the limit was implemented by law in 1997. Because of the new laws, Norway witnessed a rapid rise in the number of cities after 1996. A number of relatively small settlements are now called ''by'', such as Brekstad with 1,828 inhabitants and

Kolvereid Kolvereid is a town in the municipality of Nærøysund in Trøndelag county, Norway. The town of Kolvereid is located at the west end of the Kolvereidvågen bay, off of the inner part of the Foldafjord. The Norwegian County Road 770 runs throug ...

with 1,448 inhabitants. Among the cities of today which got this status before 1996,

Tvedestrand is municipality in Agder county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Sørlandet. The administrative center is the town of Tvedestrand. There are many villages in the municipality including Dypvåg, Fiane, Gjeving, Gødder ...

with 1,983 inhabitants is the smallest. On another note, the laws of 1996 allowed some settlements which lost their city status in the 1960s to regain it.

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

, founded in 1000, is the largest city and the

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used fo ...

of Norway.

Cities and towns in Norway

Note that in most cases the population listed here is that of the municipality, including other villages, not just the urban centre. 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, to be implemented from 2020.