Vardø Municipality Vardø kommune Várggát (Northern Sami) Vuorea (Kven) Vuoreija (Finnish)
Municipality
View of Vardø
Coat of arms
Finnmark within Norway
Vardø within Finnmark
Coordinates: 70°22′14″N 31°01′27″E / 70.37056°N 31.02417°E / 70.37056; 31.02417
Country	Norway
County	Finnmark
District	Øst-Finnmark
Established	1 Jan 1838
Administrative centre	Vardø
Government
• Mayor (2023)	Tor Erik Labahå (Sp)
Area
• Total	600.85 km2 (231.99 sq mi)
• Land	585.02 km2 (225.88 sq mi)
• Water	15.83 km2 (6.11 sq mi)  2.6%
• Rank	#188 in Norway
Highest elevation [1]	492.4 m (1,615.5 ft)
Population  (2024)
• Total	1,972
• Rank	#284 in Norway
• Density	3.3/km2 (9/sq mi)
• Change (10 years)	−6.9%
Demonym	Vardøværing[2]
Official language [3]
• Norwegian form	Bokmål
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
ISO 3166 code	NO-5634[4]
Website	Official website
Data from Statistics Norway

Vardø (Norwegian pronunciation: [vaɖːø] ^ⓘ; Finnish: Vuoreija; Kven: Vuorea; Northern Sami: Várggát) is a municipality in Finnmark county in the extreme northeastern part of Norway. Vardø is the easternmost town in Norway, more to the east than Saint Petersburg or Istanbul. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Vardø. Two of the larger villages in the municipality are Kiberg and Svartnes.

The 601-square-kilometre (232 sq mi) municipality is the 188th largest by area out of the 357 municipalities in Norway. Vardø is the 284th most populous municipality in Norway with a population of 1,972. The municipality's population density is 3.3 inhabitants per square kilometre (8.5/sq mi) and its population has decreased by 6.9% over the previous 10-year period.^[5][6]

General information

The town of Vardø and the rural district around it was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt law). The law required that all towns be separated from their rural districts, but because of a low population and very few voters, this was impossible to carry out for Vardø in 1838. (This also happened to the nearby towns of Hammerfest and Vadsø.) The rural district of Vardø (Vardø landdistrikt, which was renamed Båtsfjord Municipality in 1957) was officially separated from the town of Vardø in 1868. During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1964, the eastern part of Båtsfjord merged with the town of Vardø to create Vardø Municipality.^[7]

On 1 January 2020, the municipality became part of the newly formed Troms og Finnmark county. Previously, it had been part of the old Finnmark county.^[8] On 1 January 2024, the Troms og Finnmark county was divided and the municipality once again became part of Finnmark county.^[9]

Name

The Old Norse form of the name was Vargøy. The first element is vargr which means "wolf" and the last element is øy which means "island". The first element was later replaced (around 1500) with varða which means "cairn". Historically, the name was spelled Vardöe.^[10][11]

Coat of arms

The coat of arms dates to 1898. Its borders are drawn using the national colours: red, white, and blue. The border frames the shield, and the centre field shows a complex scene incorporating a sunrise with rays, two fishing boats with crews, the sea with waves, and a large cod. In the chief is the year of the town's foundation, 1789, together with the words "Vardöensis Insignia Urbis", meaning "the seal of the town of Vardø". In the lower part of the arms is the town motto: "Cedant Tenebræ Soli", meaning "Darkness shall give way to the sun."^[12][13] This is a high resolution version of the coat of arms.

Churches

The Church of Norway has one parish (sokn) within the municipality of Vardø. It is part of the Varanger prosti (deanery) in the Diocese of Nord-Hålogaland.

History

Vardø has a long settlement history before it was granted status as a town in 1789. Several stone-age sites as well as sites dating from the Sami Iron Age are known on the island. In the Medieval period, Vardø's importance grew as a result of it being the easternmost stronghold of the then-expanding Norwegian royal power. A church was built in Vardø in 1307, and the first fortress was established at about the same time. Thick cultural layers in the southeastern part of the town, Østervågen, document continuous habitation in this area reaching back at least some 800 years.

Even if the presence of the fortress and king's bailiff gave Vardø a certain degree of permanence and stability not experienced by other fishing communities in Finnmark, the town's size and importance waxed and waned with the changing fortunes of the fisheries. In the mid-16th century Vardø had a population of 400 to 500 people. By 1789, however, it had reduced to about 100.

In the 17th century, Vardø was the center of a great number of witchcraft trials. More than 90 persons, Norwegian and Sami, were given death sentences. They are commemorated in the Steilneset Memorial.

In 1769, the Hungarian astronomer Maximilian Hell and his assistant János Sajnovics, delegated by Christian VII of Denmark, traveled to Vardø to observe the Transit of Venus.

After 1850, the town saw a marked expansion. The fisheries grew in importance, and so did the Pomor trade with Russia's White Sea region. In 1850 the population reached 400, and in 1910 it passed 3 000.

During World War II, with Norway occupied by the German Wehrmacht, Vardø was heavily bombed by Allied, mostly Russian forces. Most of the town center was destroyed, and the population was evacuated. After the war, the city center was completely reconstructed, but older, traditional houses survived in the periphery, such as in the old town in Østervågen.

As of 2017, the fishing industry had collapsed. From 1995 to 2017, the population shrank by 50 percent to 2,100 people. In May 2017 work to lay a new electric cable from the Norwegian mainland to the island began. The additional electricity is needed to power the American-funded GLOBUS space surveillance system, located about 40 miles from Russia's Kola Peninsula, a territory studded with high-security naval bases and restricted military zones. The secrecy surrounding the radar systems has spawned fears that officials are covering up health hazards and other possible dangers. The electromagnetic pulses the current radar system emits interfere with television and radio reception, and some residents have blamed them for a rash of miscarriages and cancer cases in a civilian district next to the fenced-in security zone.^[14]

The town was selected as the millennium site for Finnmark county.

Government

All municipalities in Norway are responsible for primary education (through 10th grade), outpatient health services, senior citizen services, welfare and other social services, zoning, economic development, and municipal roads and utilities. The municipality is governed by a municipal council of directly elected representatives. The mayor is indirectly elected by a vote of the municipal council.^[15] The municipality is under the jurisdiction of the Indre og Østre Finnmark District Court and the Hålogaland Court of Appeal.

Municipal council

The municipal council (Kommunestyre) of Vardø is made up of 19 representatives elected to four-year terms. The tables below show the current and historical composition of the council by political party.