Haugesund, Norway

Historie

is a town and municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. The town is the main population centre of the Haugaland region in northern Rogaland. The majority of the population of Haugesund lives in the main urban area surrounding the city centre, with the northwestern part of the municipality being fairly rural.LocationThe town is situated on a strategically important sound, the Karmsundet, through which ships could pass without traversing heavy seas. In the early years, the coastal waters off Haugesund were a huge source of herring, and the town grew accordingly. Despite being barely a village back then, King Harald Fairhair lived at Avaldsnes, very close to the modern town of Haugesund. In the last decades, the town, like its neighbours, has been turning towards the petroleum industry, with the herring being long gone.PopulationHaugesund is a small municipality, only about. The population (in 2015) is 36,538, giving the municipality a population density of. The "urban area" of the town of Haugesund, which actually crosses over slightly into the neighboring municipality of Karmøy, has a total of about 40,152 (of that 5,425 people live in Karmøy) people. This leaves about 2,000 residents of Haugesund that live outside the town of Haugesund in the rural portion of the municipality.