Bakka is a tiny village in

Aurland Municipality Aurland () is a municipality in the county of Vestland, Norway. It is located on the south side of the Sognefjorden in the traditional district of Sogn. The administrative center is the village of Aurlandsvangen. Other villages include Bakka, ...

Vestland Vestland is a Counties of Norway, county in Norway. The county is located in Western Norway, and its administrative centre is Bergen, where the executive and political leadership is based. The County governor (Norway), County Governor is based in ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. It is located on the western shore of the

Nærøyfjord The Nærøyfjord (or ''Nærøyfjorden'', ) is a fjord in Aurland Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The narrow fjord is a branch of the large Sognefjord. The long fjord is only wide in some parts. The river Nærøydalselvi flows down the ...

, about north of the village of

Gudvangen Gudvangen is a village in Aurland Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is a popular tourist destination and is located at the end of the Nærøyfjord where the Nærøydalselvi river empties into the fjord. The European route E16 highway ...

and access to the

European route E16 European route E16 is the designation of a main west–east road through Northern Ireland, Scotland, Norway and Sweden, from Derry to Gävle, via Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, previously by ferry to Bergen, Voss, through the Gudvanga Tunnel and ...

highway. The village is home to the

Bakka Church Bakka Church () is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Aurland Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is located in the village of Bakka, on the shores of the sparsely populated Nærøyfjorden. It is the church for the Nærøy parish ...

. In 2000, the Bakka Tunnel was constructed on the road from Gudvangen to Bakka to make the journey quicker and safer.

Name

The name ''Bakka'' is derived from the

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

word ''bakki'' which means "(river) bank". The ''-a'' ending is the

dative case In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this examp ...

ending used with prepositions to show location: "on the bank". In the 19th century, it was common to spell the name ''Bakke''.

Media gallery

File:Bakka Nærøyfjorden.jpg, View of Bakka File:Village in Norway.jpg, Bakka File:Bakka kirke.jpg, Bakka Church File:Bakka kyrkje.jpg, Village and church File:Tourist boat in Nærøyfjorden.jpg, Overview of Bakka and Nærøyfjord

References

Villages in Vestland Aurland {{Vestland-geo-stub