New population figures from Norway’s state statistics bureau (SSB, Statistics Norway) show growth in all counties except the country’s two northernmost, Nordland and Troms og Finnmark. Their population numbers registered a decline of around 800 people.
Norway’s total population has grown by around 900,000 people in the past 20 years, but Northern Norway’s by just 19,000. The northern region had 481,756 residents as of the end of the third quarter, September 30, spread over a vast area much bigger than the entire country of Denmark.
Even though cities like Bodø and Tromsø in Northern Norway have grown and developed considerably in recent years, the region’s total population only accounts for 8.9 percent of Norway’s total population of 5,415,166. In 2001 the figure was 10.2 percent.
More than half the country’s total population growth has occurred in the large county of Viken that surrounds Oslo. The capital itself, meanwhile, only gained 1,100 residents in the past year, now claiming a population of 698,600. High housing prices in Oslo have prompted a new migration out of the city, to neighbouring communities or even farther afield, since more people can now work remotely from home offices.
newsinenglish.no staff
