Trondenes is a neighborhood and parish in the town of Harstad in

Harstad Municipality Harstad (; ) is the second-most populated municipality in Troms county, Norway. It is mostly located on the large island of Hinnøya. The municipal center is the Harstad (town), town of Harstad, which is the most populous town in Central Håloga ...

Troms Troms (; ; ; ) is a Counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. It borders Finnmark county to the northeast and Nordland county in the southwest. Norrbotten Län in Sweden is located to the south and further southeast is a shorter border with ...

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 ...

. The area is located on the northern end of the town, on a

peninsula A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is only connected to land on one side. Peninsulas exist on each continent. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Etymology The word ''peninsula'' derives , . T ...

in the Vågsfjorden. The village is notable for the Trondenes Fort at the northern tip of the peninsula as well as the medieval Trondenes Church.

History

The medieval Trondenes Church was historically the centre of the large Trondenes prosti, a deanery in the Diocese of Hålogaland. According to tradition, the first

Christians A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the world. The words '' Christ'' and ''C ...

in Northern Norway were

baptised Baptism (from ) is a Christians, Christian sacrament of initiation almost invariably with the use of water. It may be performed by aspersion, sprinkling or affusion, pouring water on the head, or by immersion baptism, immersing in water eit ...

, perhaps as early as the year 999, in the small pond, Laugen, just west of Trondenes Church. Many discoveries have been made around Trondenes from the

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

period and more recent eras. There are burial mounds from around 1020 located at Altevågen, a short distance north of the church. Prior to the area becoming a part of the urban town of Harstad, the area near the church was a separate village which was the

administrative centre An administrative centre is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune, is located. In countries with French as the administrative language, such as Belgi ...

of the large Trondenes Municipality which existed from 1838 until 1964, when it became part of

Name

The municipality (originally the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

) is named after the old ''Trondenes'' farm () since the historic Trondenes Church was built there. The first element is the

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...

of the word which means " hog", referring to the shape of a nearby mountain. The last element is which means "

headland A headland, also known as a head, is a coastal landform, a point of land usually high and often with a sheer drop, that extends into a body of water. It is a type of promontory. A headland of considerable size often is called a cape.Whittow, Jo ...

". The shape of the headland has been compared with that of the snout of a hog.

References

Harstad Villages in Troms {{Troms-geo-stub