Tafjord is a village in Fjord Municipality in Møre og Romsdal county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a 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 Jan Mayen and the ...

. The village is in a valley located at the end of the

Tafjorden Tafjorden is an inner branch of the Norddalsfjorden/ Storfjorden in Fjord Municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site West Norwegian Fjords. The fjord is located southeast of the village of Sylt ...

, about southeast of the municipal centre of Sylte, and just west of the borders of

Reinheimen National Park Reinheimen National Park ( no, Reinheimen nasjonalpark) is a national park in Norway that was established in 2006. The park consists of a continuous protected mountain area. It is located in Møre og Romsdal and Innlandet counties in Norway. The ...

. In the park, the mountains Tordsnose, Karitinden, and Puttegga all lie about to the southeast of Tafjord in the

Tafjordfjella Tafjordfjella or Tafjordfjellene ( en, The Tafjord mountains) is a mountain range in Møre og Romsdal and Innlandet counties, Norway. It is located in the municipalities of Fjord, Stranda, Rauma, and Skjåk. The area takes its name from the villa ...

mountain range. Tafjord ras

The village is very isolated and (other than by boat) the only way into the valley is by road from the village of Sylte. The road is composed almost entirely of two

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

s through the very steep mountains along the edge of the

: the

Heggur Tunnel The Heggur Tunnel ( no, Heggurtunnelen) is a road tunnel in Fjord Municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. The long tunnel was built in 1982 to connect the isolated village of Tafjord to the rest of Norway's road network. The village is ...

and the long Skjegghammar Tunnel.

Climate

The weather station in Tafjord have been recording since 1925, and holds the record for the warmest temperature in Norway in November at . The January record was earlier a national record until it was beaten in 2020. These warm temperatures in winter and late autumn are primarily due to

foehn wind A Foehn or Föhn (, , ), is a type of dry, relatively warm, downslope wind that occurs in the lee (downwind side) of a mountain range. It is a rain shadow wind that results from the subsequent adiabatic warming of air that has dropped most of ...

. In April 1937, the monthly average was in Tafjord, the warmest April ever recorded in Norway.

Tafjord rockslide disaster

On 7 April 1934, a

rockslide A rockslide is a type of landslide caused by rock failure in which part of the bedding plane of failure passes through compacted rock and material collapses ''en masse'' and not in individual blocks. Note that a rockslide is similar to an avalanc ...

of about of rock fell off the mountain Langhamaren from a height of about . The rock landed in the

which created a local

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater exp ...

which killed 34 people living on the shore of the fjord. The waves reached a height of near the landslide, about at Sylte, and about at Tafjord. It was one of the worst natural disasters in Norway in the 20th century.

References

Villages in Møre og Romsdal Fjord (municipality) {{MøreRomsdal-geo-stub