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Fjord Municipality

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Fjord Municipality

Fjord is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Sunnmøre. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Stordal. Other villages in the municipality include Valldal, Eidsdal, Norddal, Tafjord, Fjørå/Selboskarbygda, Sylte. The name Fjord is a common word and name part in Norway and was chosen for the new municipality established in 2020 for reasons of search engine optimization, despite not having any historical tradition in the municipality.

The 1,191-square-kilometre (460 sq mi) municipality is the 92nd largest by area out of the 357 municipalities in Norway. Fjord Municipality is the 255th most populous municipality in Norway with a population of 2,492. The municipality's population density is 2.1 inhabitants per square kilometre (5.4/sq mi) and its population has decreased by 8.4% over the previous 10-year period.

The municipality was established on 1 January 2020 after the government of Norway approved the merger of Stordal Municipality (population: 972) and Norddal Municipality (population: 1,670). The borders have not changed since that time.

The municipality was named Fjord to signify its location at the inner part of the Storfjorden. The name Fjord has no historical basis or tradition in the area; according to the municipality, the name was chosen in 2020 because of a desire to optimize search engine results and that it wanted Google results for the common word "fjord" to be dominated by the municipality to attract tourists.

The official Language Council of Norway criticized the name of the municipality and stated that "fjord is a common word that has been appropriated as the name of a municipality, which we opposed." The council also stated that it is an important principle that municipal names should be based on names with a historical tradition in the area, and that "invented names" with no tradition such as Fjord are unfortunate.

The coat of arms was granted on 30 October 2019 to be used starting on 1 January 2020 upon the establishment of the new municipality. The arms have a blue field (background) and the charge is four parallelogram shapes on the left and right sides of the escutcheon that extend off the shield. The charge has a tincture of argent which means it is commonly colored white, but if it is made out of metal, then silver is used. The design was chosen to represent the mountains on either side of the Storfjorden which flows through the municipality. The blue color in the field symbolizes the water and sky while the white shapes represent the snowy mountains surrounding the water. The arms were designed by Dag Øistein Endsjø. The municipal flag has the same design as the coat of arms.

The Church of Norway has two parishes (sokn) within Fjord Municipality: Stordal in the north and Norddal in the south. The municipality is part of the Nordre Sunnmøre prosti (deanery) in the Diocese of Møre.

Fjord Municipality is located along the inner Storfjorden and around the Norddalsfjorden and the Tafjorden which flow west to east. The majority of the municipality lies east and south of the fjord, while a small previously inhabited mountainous area on the west side of the fjord is also part of Fjord. Ytste Skotet is a preserved historic farm/museum that is located on the steep mountainsides on the west side of the fjord. Most of the municipality surrounds the Stordalen valley and the Valldalen valley, both on the east side of the fjord. The highest point in the municipality is the 1,999-metre (6,558 ft) tall mountain Puttegga, on the border with Rauma Municipality.

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