Diocese of Tunsberg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tunsberg is a diocese in the Church of Norway. It includes Vestfold and Buskerud, and the cathedral city is Tønsberg. Since 2003, the bishop has been Laila Riksaasen Dahl.

Tunsberg diocese is not a very old diocese. Before the establishment of Tunsberg in 1948, Vestfold and Buskerud belonged to the Diocese of Oslo.

In a meeting of the episcopate in 1936, it was made clear that the Diocese of Oslo - which included about one-third of Norway's population - could not be managed by a single bishop. Therefore the episcopate suggested that Vestfold and Buskerud should become their own diocese. But it was not before after the liberation of Norway in 1945 that this discussion started again. The result of this was that the Odelsting - the larger of the two divisions of the Storting - decided on November 24, 1947 that Vestfold and Buskerud was to become a new diocese, and that Tønsberg would be the new cathedral city of Tunsberg.