Town status

Svolvær's historical significance as an important fishing village allowed the town to be granted town status (ladested) on 1 July 1918 when the new town of Svolvær was separated from the municipality of Vågan to become its own municipality. Initially, the new municipality had 2,429 residents and it included 7.3 square kilometres (2.8 sq mi) of land. During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1964, Svolvær municipality was merged with the municipalities of Gimsøy and Vågan to form the new, larger municipality of Vågan as it is known today. Prior to the merger, Svolvær had 3,952 residents. Due to this merger, Svolvær lost its status as a "town".^[5][3]

Following new legislation, Svolvær was again able to declare itself a "town" in 1996.

Name

The town (and former municipality) is named after the old Svolvær farm (Old Norse: Svǫlver) since the town grew up on the site of the historic farm. In 1567, historical records show the name as "Suoluer". The first element of the name comes from the word svalr which means "cool" or "chilly". The last element is vær which means "fishing village".^[6]

Coat of arms

The coat of arms was granted on 20 January 1941 and it was in use until 1964 when it became part of Vågan Municipality. The official blazon is "Azure, a cod naiant argent in between a bar gemel wavy" (Norwegian: På blå bunn en vannrett sølv torsk mellom to bølgede strenger av sølv). This means the arms have a blue field (background) and the charge is a cod in between two wavy lines. The cod and wavy lines both have a tincture of argent which means it is commonly colored white, but if it is made out of metal, then silver is used. The blue color and the design of the arms symbolize the importance of the sea and fishing for the municipality. The arms were designed by John Johnsen.^[7][8]

Government

Svolvær was a municipality from 1916 until 1964, and during that time, it was self-governing as a municipality. During this time, it was responsible for primary education (through 10th grade), outpatient health services, senior citizen services, unemployment, social services, zoning, economic development, and municipal roads. During its existence, this municipality was governed by a municipal council of elected representatives, which in turn elected a mayor.^[9]

Climate

Incredibly, despite the town's extremely northern location above the Arctic Circle Svolvær experiences an oceanic climate (Cfb) or a humid continental climate (Dfb) on the border of subpolar oceanic. This temperature anomaly results in Svolvær having an average annual temperature warmer than cities such as Quebec City located more than 20 degrees farther south. Sheltered by the mountains to the north and west, the Svolvær area has less fog and experiences somewhat higher daytime temperatures in summer than the western part of Lofoten, but the same mountains also create more orographic precipitation on rainy days.^[2] Precipitation is heaviest in autumn and winter; October averages three times as much rain as does June. Svolvær has an average frost-free season of nearly 6 months. Highest recorded temperature is 29.7C on 18 July 2018 and lowest recorded temperature is -12.3C on 30 December 2002.^{[18] [19]}