Counties of Norway

Norway is divided into 19 administrative regions, called counties (singular Norwegian: fylke, plural Norwegian: fylker (Bokmål) / fylke (Nynorsk) from Old Norse: fylki from the word "folk"); until 1918, they were known as amter. The counties form the first-level subdivisions of Norway and are further divided into 428 municipalities (kommune, pl. kommuner / kommunar). Svalbard and Jan Mayen are outside the county division and ruled directly on national level. The capital Oslo is considered both a county and a municipality.

In recent years, there has been some political debate as to whether counties are a practical, economical, or even necessary level of administration. See politics of Norway for more information.

Below is a list of the Norwegian counties as they have been since 1919, with their current administrative centres. Note that the counties are administered both by appointees of the national government and to a lesser extent by their own elected bodies. The county numbers are from the official numbering system ISO 3166-2:NO, which follows the coastline from the Swedish border in the southeast to the Russian border in the northeast. The number 13 was dropped from the system when the city of Bergen (county no. 13) was merged into Hordaland (county no. 12) in 1972. (There is no connection between the lack of a county number 13 and the belief that 13 is an unlucky number.)

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