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Department of special collections 
Language Collections

Name Research

The Language Collections houses several name collections, mainly place-names. The collections are used both for research and in the administration of the Norwegian Place-Name Act. Some collections have been digitized, but not all are available online as of yet. Below we present the most extensive collections and most important sources and applications.

Main content

Stadnamnportalen - a new portal for Norwegian place-names

The Language Collections have developed a website for displaying digitized datasets with place-names. The portal Place-Name Portal  (Stadnamnportalen) is a platform for displaying all digitized data sets online in a single portal. This platform can handle place-names data sets regardless of size and scope. It is also possible to link to external place-name data through APIs.

The portal is a web-based service for use by everyone from name examiners, historians and geographers, to anyone interested in Norwegian town names - in the public domain for everyone.

The National Norwegian Place-Name Database

The national place-name database contains approximately 700,000 names in total from the national Norwegian Place-Name Archive in the Place-Name Archive (Stedsnavnarkivet) and the Digital Index Card Archive (Oppslagsarkivet). In addition, the database contains 3,700 original collection maps, the Map Archive (Kartarkivet). The Place-Name Archive database is also as a dataset searchable in the Place-Name Portal.