Western Norway

Western Norway (Bokmål: Vestlandet, Vest-Norge; Nynorsk: Vestlandet, Vest-Noreg) is the region along the Atlantic coast of southern Norway. It consists of the counties Rogaland, Vestland, and Møre og Romsdal. The region has no official or political-administrative function. The region has a population of approximately 1.4 million people. The largest city is Bergen and the second-largest is Stavanger. Historically the regions of Agder, Vest-Telemark, Hallingdal, Valdres, and northern parts of Gudbrandsdal have been included in Western Norway.

Western Norway, as well as other parts of historical regions of Norway, shares a common history with Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland and to a lesser extent the Netherlands and Britain. For example, the Icelandic horse is a close relative of the Fjord horse and both the Faroese and Icelandic languages are based on the Old West Norse.

In early Norse times, people from Western Norway became settlers at the Western Isles in the Northern Atlantic, Orkney, Shetland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. During the Viking Age settlements were made at the Hebrides, Man and Ireland proper.

In early modern times, Western Norway experienced much emigration to the United States, Canada, and to a lesser extent to the United Kingdom. This applies particularly to the US states of Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, Montana, and the Canadian province of Manitoba. The Icelandic and Faroese people, and many people in the British Isles, are descendants of Norsemen and Vikings who emigrated from Western Norway during the Viking Age. On the other hand, thousands of Western Norwegians are descendants of Dutch and German traders who arrived in the 16th and the 17th centuries, especially in Bergen.

Vestland is also the name of a county consisting of two former counties, viz. Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane. The two counties were re-merged after having been split in 1763 (then called Søndre Bergenhus and Nordre Bergenhus, respectively).

Norway's history begins on the west coast, particularly in Rogaland. Excavations and rock art tells us that it was in Rogaland that the first humans settled in Norway, when the ice retreated after the last ice age ca. 10,000 years ago. There are many artifacts from the Stone Age in Rogaland. The preliminary oldest traces of humans are found in a settlement on Galta, Rennesøy, near the ferry terminal Mortavika and Vista in Randaberg Municipality. In the beginning there has been sure short visits by people from the south who hunted along the coast. It is thought that people came from Doggerland, the North Sea land area between Denmark and England, which disappeared when the ice retreated and sea levels rose. The people who lived there must now find a new land. Some retreated south again, while a few passed the Norwegian Trench (which was considerably smaller than now) in its hunt for deer and the new country.^{[citation needed]}

The region includes most of the scope of the old Gulating, which was founded around the year 900. The Gulating Act divided the country into the Western counties, which consisted of the former småkongedømmene that existed in the area before the unification of the 800's and then was converted to jarle judge. These were Sunnmørafylke (Sunnmøre), Firda County (Fjordane), Sygna County (Sogn), Hordafylke (Hordaland), Rygjafylke (Rogaland) and Egdafylke (Agder).

Harald Hairfair united Norway and parts of Sweden west of Lake Vänern and Götaälv in the 9th century from his Castle Avaldsnes on Karmøy near Haugesund. Norway was named from the Way North by seafaring.