Vadso Travel Guide, Norway

The city of Vadso happens to be part of Finnmark County (which was earlier known as Vardo hus amt or Finmarkens amt). This county is located in the north western region of Norway. The city also has a municipality with the same name and is also the administrative hub for the municipality as well as the county of Finnmark.

It was the year 1838 when Vadso was given the tag of municipality. Although by the year 1838 the law which was to make Vadso a municipality was passed, it took many years for Vadso to actually become a municipality. The reason for this delay was that the approved law stated that every city had to be separated from the respective rural district but later on it was found out that almost all the cities had very low population and the count of voters in these cities was also below the average number. Hence Vadso wasn’t officially given the status of municipality. Various rural districts were separated from Vadso in three stages and by the year 1964 it was officially tagged as a municipality. This delayed act did provide the city enough recognition on the national level.

Vadso was initially called as Vatnsoy which was actually the Old Norse (which was the language spoken in Northern Germany till the year 1300) version. The first section of the word vatn means “water” and the last section oy means “island”. Hence the combined meaning of Vadso turns out to be ‘the island of drinking water’.

It was the year 1976 when Vadso took another step towards being an important city of Norway. It was this year when the city was gifted with its own Coat of Arms. It bears the head of a reindeer in silver color on red background. Actually the reindeer happens to be an important animal for the locals of Vadso and hence its inclusion in the Coat of Arms is understood.

Vadso has its own International Airport which is situated around 4 kilometers from the heart of the city. It was opened for the general public in 1974. Initially the length of the runway was around 880 meters but recently the government has approved the new length which will be around 1200 meters thus larger aircrafts will be able to land on this airport.