Odda
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Please help improve this article by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (September 2008) |
| Odda kommune | |||
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| — Municipality — | |||
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| Coordinates (city): 60°1′33″N 6°40′2″E / 60.02583°N 6.66722°ECoordinates: 60°1′33″N 6°40′2″E / 60.02583°N 6.66722°E | |||
| Country | Norway | ||
| County | Hordaland | ||
| District | Hardanger | ||
| Municipality ID | NO-1228 | ||
| Administrative centre | Odda | ||
| Government | |||
| - Mayor (2007) | Gard Folkvord (Ap) | ||
| Area (Nr. 42 in Norway) | |||
| - Total | 1,616 km2 (623.9 sq mi) | ||
| - Land | 1,478 km2 (570.7 sq mi) | ||
| Population (2004) | |||
| - Total | 7,468 | ||
| - Density | 5/km2 (12.9/sq mi) | ||
| - Change (10 years) | -8.0 % | ||
| - Rank in Norway | 131 | ||
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) | ||
| - Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) | ||
| Official language form | Neutral | ||
| Norwegian demonym | Odding[1] | ||
| Website | www.odda.kommune.no | ||
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| Historical populations | ||
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| Year | Pop. | %± |
| 1951 | 8,807 | — |
| 1960 | 9,584 | 8.8% |
| 1970 | 10,051 | 4.9% |
| 1980 | 9,183 | −8.6% |
| 1990 | 8,289 | −9.7% |
| 2000 | 7,727 | −6.8% |
| 2007 | 7,154 | −7.4% |
| 2008 | 7,107 | −0.7% |
| 2009 | 7,054 | −0.7% |
| Source: Statistics Norway. | ||
Odda (help·info) is a municipality and town in the county of Hordaland, Norway. Odda was separated from Ullensvang on 1 July 1913. Røldal was merged with Odda on 1 January 1964. The town of Odda is the centre of the landscape of Hardanger, located at the end of the Hardangerfjord.
In 1927, Erling Johnson, working at Odda Smelteverk, invented a process to produce fertilizers. This process is now known as the Odda process.
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[edit] General information
[edit] Name
The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old farm Odda (Old Norse Oddi), since the first church was built there. The name is identical with the word oddi which means "headland".
[edit] Coat-of-arms
The coat-of-arms is from modern times. They were granted on 8 October 1982. The arms show a canting of an arrowhead (Norwegian language: pilodd). The name of the village, however is not derived from an arrow head, but from a landscape element.[2]
[edit] History
The Røldal stave church was built around 1200 - 1250 in Røldal.
The present Odda is a modern town which grew up around smelters built at the head of the Sørfjord branch of the Hardangerfjord in the mid-twentieth century, drawing migrants from different parts of Norway.
As a result, there developed in town a new dialect, a mixture of that spoken in the home regions of the migrants - a phenomenon termed by linguists "a Koiné language".
Odda provided valuable insights to linguists studying this phenomenon. The researcher Kerswill conducted an intensive study of the Norwegian spoken in Odda and in its neighbor Tyssedal, which arose in the same time and socio-economic circumstances as those of Odda but its inhabitants came from a very different geographical origin: The workers in Odda came predominantly (86%) from western Norway. In Tyssedal only about one third came from western Norway; one third came from eastern Norway; and the rest from other parts of the country.
The dialects that evolved in these two towns were radically different from each other, though spoken at a short geograhical distance from each other.
[edit] Geography
Odda municipality includes the waterfall Låtefossen; the lakes Sandvinvatnet, Votna, Valldalsvatnet, Røldalsvatnet, Ringedalsvatnet, Langavatnet, and parts of Ståvatn; the glacier Buarbreen and parts of Folgefonna National Park.
[edit] References
- ^ "Personnemningar til stadnamn i Noreg" (in Norwegian). Språkrådet. http://www.sprakrad.no/Sprakhjelp/Rettskriving_Ordboeker/Innbyggjarnamn.
- ^ Norske Kommunevåpen (1990). "Nye kommunevåbener i Norden". http://www.ngw.nl/int/nor/o/odda.htm. Retrieved 22 September 2008.
[edit] External links
Media related to Odda at Wikimedia Commons
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