Norwegian passport

Norwegian passport
The front cover of a contemporary Norwegian ePassport
Date first issued	April 1, 2011 (current version)
Issued by	Norwegian Police Service
Type of document	Passport
Purpose	Identification
Eligibility requirements	Norwegian citizenship
Expiration	2 years for children up to the age of 5; 3 years for children up to the age of 10; 5 years for individuals aged 10–16; and 10 years for individuals aged 16 and older

Norwegian Passports are issued to nationals of Norway for the purpose of international travel. The passport may also serve as proof of Norwegian citizenship and is valid for ten years. The passport shares the standardized layout of most EU countries, as Norway has implemented the EU passport regulation. The colour is burgundy-red and similar, but not identical to the design of most EU countries. Despite the fact Norway is not part of the EU, the country is a signatory of the Schengen Agreement and a member state of the European Economic Area (EEA). Consequently, Norwegian citizens generally have the same rights as EU citizens in EEA countries and are treated as EU citizens for the purposes of travel and entry into EEA countries.

Regular Norwegian passports are burgundy in colour, with the Norway Coat of arms emblazoned in the top of the front cover. The words "NORGE", "NOREG" and "NORWAY" ("Norway" in Bokmål Norwegian (one of the two forms of Norwegian), Nynorsk Norwegian (the other form of Norwegian) and English, respectively) is inscribed below the coat of arms and the word "PASS" and "PASSPORT" emblazoned below the name of the country. The new biometric passport has the standard biometric symbol at the bottom.

The Norwegian passport includes the following data:

The information page ends with the machine-readable zone starting with "PxNOR, where x indicates the type of passport. For example, ordinary passports contain "PVNOR", where the "V" presumably means "vanlig" ("ordinary" in Norwegian.)

The biometric passports contain an RFID chip containing the passport's printed data in a digital format along with the photograph in a JPEG format along with a digital key to verify that the data contained is authentic and hasn't been tampered with. The European Union requires fingerprint data to be stored on the member state's passports at latest in June 2009. As an EEA member state, Norway started storing fingerprint data when applying for a new passport on 6 April 2010.