Time in Norway
In Norway the standard time is the Central European Time (CET). Norway observes Summer Time (sommertid, daylight saving time). The transition dates are the same as for other European countries.
Svalbard and Jan Mayen observe the same time as the mainland.
Norway stretches more to the west and east than it might look like on a common Mercator projection map. The westernmost point in Norway proper is on 4°30′E longitude, meaning 42 minutes difference between mean solar time and official time, while the easternmost point in Norway proper is on 31°10′E longitude, meaning 64 minutes difference between mean solar time and official time. The difference between those points is 26°41′ or 1 hour 46 minutes. The 15° E meridian passes Norway in the northern part of the country, from north over Vesterålen and Lofoten islands, then Vestfjorden and finally Salten and Saltfjellet, a total distance of about 320 km. The vast majority of the population in Norway lives to the west of the 15°E longitude.
Notation
IANA time zone database
The
Data for Norway directly from zone.tab of the IANA time zone database. Columns marked with * are the columns from zone.tab itself.
c.c.* | Coordinates* | TZ* | Comments* | UTC offset | UTC DST offset
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|
NO |
+5955+01045 | Europe/Oslo |
+01:00 | +02:00 | |
SJ |
+7800+01600 | Arctic/Longyearbyen |
+01:00 | +02:00 | |
SJ |
Atlantic/Jan_Mayen |
+01:00 | +02:00 | ||
AQ |
−720041+0023206 | Antarctica/Troll |
Troll | +00:00 | +02:00 |
Daylight saving time
Norway follows the European Union in this matter.
History
Norway was comparably late to introduce an official standard time, mainly due to the lack of a railway network connecting the country in an east–west direction. Throughout Norway, the main means of transport were by cart onshore and ship at sea, both too slow and unpredictable to have an issue with the local time. With the introduction of the
It was not until 1885 the first suggestions came to introduce standard time in Norway, but this met great opposition by influencing groups and locally in the districts of Norway. The most complicated of four propositions was to divide Norway into 5 time zones 15 minutes apart. But none of them was accepted. In 1893 the time issue emerged again, and since the last time, the neighbouring countries
In Norway, summer time was observed in 1916, 1943–45, and 1959–65. The arrangement 1959-65 was controversial, and was discontinued 1965. Their neighbour, Sweden, did not use it during this period. However, in 1980 summer time was reintroduced (together with Sweden and Denmark), and since 1996 Norway has followed the European Union regarding transition dates.
See also
References
External links
- https://web.archive.org/web/20060928081509/http://met.no/met/met_lex/q_u/sommertid.html
- There is a Norwegian law saying that the time zone of Norwegian territory is UTC+1, except for a part of year (daylight saving time) "LOV 2007-01-26 nr 04: Lov om målenheter, måling og normaltid.(Law about measurement, units and standard time)". Norwegian Government, NHD. 2008-01-01..