Animals in Norway

Norway is a long, narrow country that stretches more than 1,700 kilometers from the North Sea to the Arctic, with a coastline so cut by fjords and islands that it adds up to around 100,000 kilometers. About 5.6 million people live there, most of them in the south and around Oslo, so much of the country is forest, high plateau and mountain with very few roads. In one trip you can go from the leafy south coast and the deep western fjords to the bare mountain plateaus, the birch and pine forests of the interior and the tundra of Finnmark, and far to the north lie the glaciers and ice of Svalbard. A warm ocean current keeps the coast mostly free of ice even above the Arctic Circle, and the north lives with the midnight sun in summer and weeks without daylight in winter.

The land has always shaped how people live here. Fishing villages grew along the coast, farmers moved their animals to mountain summer farms, and in the north the Sámi have herded reindeer for centuries. Conservation came later: Rondane became the first national park in 1962, and the Geirangerfjord and Nærøyfjord were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2005. Today the parks protect the plateaus where Europe's last big herds of wild mountain reindeer roam, and the musk oxen released on Dovrefjell between 1947 and 1953 still live there, with more than 200 counted in 2024.

Most visitors come for the fjords, the Lofoten islands, the northern lights around Tromsø and cruises along the coast, from summer for the midnight sun to winter for the aurora. The wildlife follows these contrasts: whales and seabirds along the coast, deer and big predators in the forests, reindeer on the mountains and polar bears and walruses on the Arctic ice.

Wild animals rarely hurt people in Norway, and the real risks depend on where you go. On Svalbard, polar bears are a serious danger: they can turn up anywhere, even near the settlements, so anyone leaving town must carry a way to scare them off, and most visitors travel with an armed guide. Walruses there should be watched from a distance, especially from small boats. On the mainland, the moose is the animal that causes the most harm, not by attacking but on the roads, where collisions happen every year, mostly at dusk and in winter darkness. Female moose with calves in spring and bulls in the autumn rut can also charge if people get too close. Brown bears, wolves, lynx and wolverines avoid people, and attacks on humans are extremely rare; the conflicts are over sheep and herded reindeer grazing in the mountains. The adder is the only venomous snake. It lives over much of southern Norway, bites are rarely serious and many carry no venom at all, but any bite needs a doctor, and snakes are protected, so they must not be killed. Ticks along the southern coast are the most common nuisance.

Norway's best known animals are spread from the fjords to the Arctic ice. Orcas are the big winter show: from about November to January they follow the herring into the fjords around Tromsø and Skjervøy, often with humpback whales, and boat trips run almost daily. In summer, sperm whales feed in the deep canyon off Andenes in Vesterålen, and blue whales come to the waters around Svalbard. Polar bears live only on Svalbard and the Arctic sea ice, never on the mainland, and are best seen from expedition ships that sail the archipelago between June and September. The moose is common in forests across most of the country and is often seen at dawn and dusk near fields and roads. Reindeer are everywhere in the north, where the Sámi herd them, while wild herds roam high plateaus such as Hardangervidda. Red deer are most common along the western fjords. Brown bears, gray wolves, Eurasian lynx and wolverines are shy and rarely seen: bears live mostly in the far north and along the Swedish border, and the wolves in the forests of the southeast. Puffins return to bird cliffs such as Runde and Røst from May to August.