| Odda kommune | |||
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| — Municipality — | |||
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| Odda within Hordaland | |||
| Coordinates: | |||
| Country | Norway | ||
| County | Hordaland | ||
| District | Hardanger | ||
| Administrative centre | Odda | ||
| Government | |||
| • Mayor (2007) | Gard Folkvord (Ap) | ||
| Area | |||
| • Total | 1,616 km2 (623.9 sq mi) | ||
| • Land | 1,478 km2 (570.7 sq mi) | ||
| Area rank | 42 in Norway | ||
| Population (2004) | |||
| • Total | 7,468 | ||
| • Rank | 131 in Norway | ||
| • Density | 5/km2 (12.9/sq mi) | ||
| • Change (10 years) | -8.0 % | ||
| Demonym | Odding[1] | ||
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) | ||
| • Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) | ||
| ISO 3166 code | NO-1228 | ||
| Official language form | Neutral | ||
| Website | www.odda.kommune.no | ||
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| Historical populations | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
| 1951 | 8,807 | — |
| 1960 | 9,584 | +8.8% |
| 1970 | 10,051 | +4.9% |
| 1980 | 9,183 | −8.6% |
| 1990 | 8,289 | −9.7% |
| 2000 | 7,727 | −6.8% |
| 2007 | 7,154 | −7.4% |
| 2008 | 7,107 | −0.7% |
| 2009 | 7,054 | −0.7% |
| Source: Statistics Norway. | ||
is a municipality and town in the county of Hordaland, Norway. Odda was separated from Ullensvang on 1 July 1913 and on 1 January 1964 Røldal was merged with Odda. The town of Odda is the centre of the landscape of Hardanger, located at the end of the Hardangerfjord.
In 1927, Erling Johnson, working at Odda Smelteverk, invented a process to produce fertilizers. This process is now known as the Odda process.
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The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old farm Odda (Old Norse Oddi), since the first church was built there. The name is identical with the word oddi which means "headland".
The coat-of-arms is from modern times. They were granted on 8 October 1982. The arms show a canting of an arrowhead (Norwegian language: pilodd). The name of the village, however is not derived from an arrow head, but from a landscape element.[2]
The Røldal stave church was built around 1200 - 1250 in Røldal.
The present Odda is a modern town which grew up around smelters built at the head of the Sørfjord branch of the Hardangerfjord in the mid-twentieth century, drawing migrants from different parts of Norway.
The carbide production and the subsequent production of cyanamide was started in 1908 after the water power plant was operational and provided the necessary electricity for the arc furnaces. The plant was the largest in the world and remained operational till 2003 shortly after the plant was sold to Philipp Brothers Chemicals Inc. The Norwegian government tried to get the site recognized together with other industrial plants as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[3][4]
As a result, there developed in town a new dialect, a mixture of that spoken in the home regions of the migrants - a phenomenon termed by linguists "a Koiné language".
Odda provided valuable insights to linguists studying this phenomenon. The researcher Kerswill conducted an intensive study of the Norwegian spoken in Odda and in its neighbor Tyssedal, which arose in the same time and socio-economic circumstances as those of Odda but its inhabitants came from a very different geographical origin: The workers in Odda came predominantly (86%) from western Norway. In Tyssedal only about one third came from western Norway; one third came from eastern Norway; and the rest from other parts of the country.
The dialects that evolved in these two towns were radically different from each other, though spoken at a short geograhical distance from each other.
Odda municipality includes the waterfall Låtefossen; the lakes Sandvinvatnet, Votna, Valldalsvatnet, Røldalsvatnet, Ringedalsvatnet, Langavatnet, and parts of Ståvatn; the glacier Buarbreen and parts of Folgefonna National Park.
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