Lærdal, Vestland County, Norway

🇳🇴 Lærdal is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is located on the south side of the Sognefjorden in the traditional district of Sogn. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Lærdalsøyri. The old Filefjell Kongevegen road passes through Lærdal on its way to Valdres and later to Oslo. The 1,343-square-kilometre (519 sq mi) municipality is the 71st largest by area out of the 356 municipalities in Norway (with over half of this area consisting of mountains). Lærdal is the 274th most populous municipality in Norway with a population of 2,117. The municipality's population density is 1.7 inhabitants per square kilometre (4.4/sq mi) and its population has decreased by 4% over the previous 10-year period.

The Lærdal river valley is long, running from Hemsedal (Høgeloft mountain) and the Filefjell mountains in the east to the Sognefjorden in the west. About half of the municipal residents live in the main village of Lærdalsøyri; the rest in the small villages in the surrounding valleys such as Borgund, Ljøsne, Tønjum, Erdal, Vindedalen, Frønningen, and Strendene. The Old Lærdalsøyri village has 161 protected buildings. Some of the houses there date back to the mid-18th century. On the night of 18–19 January 2014, a major fire destroyed at least 30 buildings.

General information Lærdal was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 . In the 19th century, the name was sometimes spelled Leerdahl or Leirdal. The municipality of 1838 was created to be identical to the Lærdal parish (prestegjeld) that included the sub-parishes (sokn) of Borgund, Tønjum, Hauge, and Aardal. In 1863, the north-eastern sub-parish of Aardal (population: 1,791) was separated from Lærdal to form a separate municipality. In 1864, the eastern sub-parish of Borgund (population: 963) was separated from Lærdal to form its own municipality. This left Lærdal with 2,777 residents.

During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1964, Lærdal (population: 1,755) was merged with the municipality of Borgund (population: 492) and the Muggeteigen, Luggenes, and Bergmål farms (population: 11) along the Sognefjorden from the municipality of Årdal. After the merger, Lærdal had a total of 2,258. On 1 January 1992, the Frønningen area (population: 32) of Leikanger Municipality was transferred to Lærdal municipality.

On 1 January 2020, the municipality became part of the newly created Vestland county after Sogn og Fjordane and Hordaland counties were merged.

Name The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old village of Lærdal (Old Norse: Lærardalr). The first element is the genitive case of the old name of the local river Lærr. The meaning of the river name is unknown. The last element is dalr which means "valley" or "dale".

Churches The Church of Norway has three parishes (sokn) within the municipality of Lærdal. It is part of the Sogn prosti (deanery) in the Diocese of Bjørgvin.