Kristiansund kommune

County	Møre og Romsdal
District	Nordmøre
Municipality	NO-1503
Administrative centre	Kristiansund
Mayor (2004)	Dagfinn Ripnes (H)
Official language form	Bokmål
Area  - Total  - Land  - Percentage	Ranked 426 23 km² 22 km² 0.01 %
Population  - Total (2004)  - Percentage  - Change (10 years)  - Density	Ranked 58 17,105 0.37 % 0.1 % 763/km²
Coordinates	63°7′N 7°49′E / 63.117, 7.817Coordinates: 63°7′N 7°49′E / 63.117, 7.817
www.kristiansund.kommune.no Data from Statistics Norway

Kristiansund is a city and municipality on the northwestern coast of Norway, in the Nordmøre district of the county Møre og Romsdal. It was officially awarded township status in 1742.

Kristiansund was established as a municipality January 1, 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). The island and municipality of Grip was merged with Kristiansund January 1, 1964. The island and municipality of Frei will be merged with Kristiansund January 1, 2008.

Geography

The city borders islands/municipalities Smøla to the northeast, Tustna to the east, Frei^[1] to the south, and Averøy to the SW. In the NW, there's nothing but the Norwegian Sea, besides the small island Grip^[2].

History

Toponymy

The city is named after the Danish-Norwegian king Christian VI in 1742. The last element is sund 'strait, sound'. The old name of the town/village (originally the island Kirkelandet) was Fosna or Fosen - from Old Norse fólgsn f 'hiding place' (here 'hidden port'). It was also often named Lille Fosen ('the small Fosen') to distinguish it from the island Storfosen ('the big Fosen') in Ørland.

Until 1877 the name was written Christianssund, in the period 1877-1888 Kristianssund, from 1889 on Kristiansund.

Before the introduction of postal codes in Norway in 1968 it was easy to confuse the name Kristiansund with Kristiansand in the south. It was therefore obligatory to always add an N (for north) to Kristiansund, and an S (for south) to Kristiansand.

Coat of arms

The coat of arms is from 1742. It shows a waterfall, because the old name of the town (Fosen) was misinterpreted as Fossund (as a compound of foss m. waterfall and sund n. strait). There are, however, no waterfalls in the municipality. A nother myth concerning the coat of arms is that there was a mix up, betwenn kr.sund's and Molde's intended shield. The dano-Norwegian governmental officials in charge of the giving of the coats, had a party to remember the momentus occasion and became too drunk and hungover to remember which was which, and so Molde got the coat with a whale ( which are scarce in between the Romsdal fjords) and kr.sund got the waterfall (Since molde is on the mainland and kr.sund lies in the open sea, it would be more likely that the waterfall was intended for moldes mountains and the wales in the Norway sea just outside kr.sund.)

Newspaper

The local newspaper is Tidens Krav.

City parts and structure

Kristiansund is built on four islands, where Nordlandet ("North Land"), humorously called Marokko ("Morocco"), is the largest, and the site of the local airport, Kvernberget (IATA code: KSU). Gomalandet and Kirk(e)landet^[3] ("Church Land"), second and third in size, are considered separate "lands" (islands) even though they are connected. The smallest island is Innlandet ("Innermost Land"; humorously, "Tahiti").

Kristiansund. Clockwise from lower left: Innlandet, Kirk(e)landet, Gomalandet, and Nordlandet.

Innlandet

Kristiansund is one of the most densely populated cities of Norway, having what is arguably the country's most urban small city center, due to the relatively small size of the islands on which it is built and the very constricted central harbour/town area of Kirkelandet.

Twin Towns

Twin Towns/ Friendship Towns :

• Kokkola, Finland
• Härnösand, Sweden
• Fredericia, Denmark

Together they have a tournament called Nordiske Dager (Nordic Days).

Transportation

Started in 1876 and still going strong is the Sundbåt ("Sound Boat"/"Strait Crossing Boat") shuttle service with a capacity of a few tens of passengers, travelling between the islands. The small motor ferry crosses the harbour from Kirk(e)landet to Innlandet, then goes on to Nordlandet, to Gomalandet, and back to Kirkelandet, repeating the round trip in half-hour intervals morning to evening on weekdays. The Sundbåt bears the distinction of being the world's oldest motorized regular public transport system in continuous service.

The road to Kristiansund from mainland Norway, National Road No. 70 (RV 70) is connected to European route E39 at the bridge/tunnel system called Krifast. After passing through the underwater tunnel from the central part of Krifast, RV 70 crosses Frei, and enters Kristiansund over the Omsund Bridge onto Nordlandet. The Nordsund Bridge brings the RV 70 to Gomalandet and its terminus in downtown at Kirkelandet. Another high bridge, the Sørsund Bridge, leads from Kirkelandet to Innlandet. The abovementioned E39 leads southwest to Molde and northeast via the E6 to Mid-Norway's principal city, Trondheim.

There is a car ferry going from Kirkelandet to Averøy, whose people have been commuting to town for many years for work as well as selling agriculture products. The ferry to Averøy connects Kristiansund to RV 64, which goes on via the scenic Atlanterhavsvegen to Molde. The ferry is scheduled to be replaced by the 5.7 km long underwater tunnel Atlanterhavstunnelen in December 2008. A second car ferry goes from Seivika on Nordlandet to Tustna in the northeast (road: RV 680), with further road and ferry connections to the islands Smøla and Hitra, and to Aure on the mainland.

Besides roads and car ferries and Kvernberget airport, communications to/from Kristiansund consist of the traditional coastal express Hurtigruten connecting coastal towns from Bergen in the south to Kirkenes in the north, and the high speed catamaran passenger service Kystekspressen to Trondheim. Another option to get to Kristiansund is to fly with Coast Air or SAS from several other Norwegian cities.

Commerce and industry

Kristiansund is known as the major bacalao city of Norway. Bacalao is made of salted, dried codfish,^[4] and has traditionally been exported in large amounts to Spain, Portugal and Latin America as food suitable during Lent. In recent years Kristiansund has become the major oil and gas city at the northwestern coast. Oil companies like Shell, Statoil and Norsk Hydro have offices in Kristiansund from where they serve their offshore installations at Haltenbanken (one of the northernmost underwater oil fields in the world).

Due to the city's heavy involvement in fish processing and international shipping, there used to be as many as seven consulates in Kristiansund, mainly to Latin countries. Currently, there are only five left: Britain, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal.

Notable people from Kristiansund

The following people are from, or have their roots in, Kristiansund.

Notes

1. ^ Kristiansund will merge with Frei on January 1, 2008. The new municipality's name, as well as its administrative center, will be Kristiansund.
2. ^ Grip was Norway's smallest-area municipality before being merged into Kristiansund in 1964.
3. ^ In the local dialect, Kirkelandet (the "Church Land") is pronounced "Kirklandet", without the middle e.
4. ^ Salted, dried cod, used in bacalao (see Baccalà and Bacalhau), is known locally as klippfisk ("Cliff Fish", eng. clipfish), the name coming from the rounded, barren cliffs on which the fish were traditionally left to dry in the open air after being opened, gutted, flattened, salted, and pressed.

Municipalities of Møre og Romsdal
Aukra | Aure | Averøy | Eide | Frei | Fræna | Giske | Gjemnes | Halsa | Haram | Hareid | Herøy | Kristiansund | Midsund | Molde | Nesset | Norddal | Rauma | Rindal | Sande | Sandøy | Skodje | Smøla | Stordal | Stranda | Sula | Sunndal | Surnadal | Sykkylven | Tingvoll | Ulstein | Vanylven | Vestnes | Volda | Ørskog | Ørsta | Ålesund

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