Norway is a country where each and every municipality has their very own set of Coat-of-Arms, so let's check some of them out!

I'll be building on this thread for a while, so stay tuned for more over the coming months.

First off is Molde!

This CoA features a whale chasing a barrel of herring! This shield was put into use in the 1740s, to celebrate how herring had saved the town from famine. Back then, herring season was heralded by whales pursuing schools of herring into the local fjords!

Next up is Sandefjord!

Oh damn this one has a whale hunter doing a sick pose with their harpoon! Guess that answers where those whales went.

This CoA has only been in use since 2017, so I'm bundling it together with the old one, from 1914. 'Got a boat on it.

Twitter's character limit is really limiting how much frivolity vs actual information I can fit into each of these, but I think you can guess what Sandefjord's whole deal has been, historically.

Let's take a break from the sea and head almost as far inland into Norway you can get, to Hemsedal! This is a dale near the centre of southern Norway (the plump bit), wherein you can find Lykkja, the highest-elevated hamlet in Northern Europe.

The shield's got a cool lynx on it!

Right next door we find Gol, whose enigmatic shield features three black keys.

The design alludes to the key to Gol's old stave church, which now resides at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History in Oslo.

Why three?

1 for a lost church
1 for the replica
1 for...

All I'm saying is there's something more to that third key.

Like what sort of reason is "We voted for two keys, but then the Directorate for Cultural Heritage 'advised' us to go with three."

I want somebody to write a thriller about this, The Third Key of Gol.

Welcome to Tynset!

It's moose.

Audnedal is a now-defunct municipality in the now-defunct county of Vest-Agder and they freaking loved cutting that lumber. One of the original inspirations for this thread, which I should've done back in 2017, before the consolidations took them from us.

The shield of the Municipality of Ullensaker features the Norse god Ull, whom it is assumed the area is named after, unless there once was a now-lost God bearing the name "Ullin". Ull is the god of skiing, bows, the hunt, and appropriately, shields. May Ull bless this thread!

Over in Lillehammer we find a municipal shield who could really do with a blessing from the ski/shield god right about now. Here we see a Birkebeiner ("Birch-leg") rebel in the process of saving the infant king Håkon IV Håkonsson from the wealthy Baglers during the civil war era.

Historical context: the Norwegian civil war era lasted from 1130 to 1240 and in its latter phase morphed into a conflict between the Baglers, who wanted an independent Catholic Church and the Birkebeiners, who wanted the church and its bishops to answer to the king.

Welcome to Ringerike, whose name literally means "The Ring Realm"! This is an old, old name, dating all the way back to the earliest fragments of Norwegian history. The historical Ring Realm was far larger than what the borders of its modern municipal namesake would suggest.

Ringerike has had a long association with kingship and chiefdom, which is what the ring itself has come to represent. The actual name refers to the Hringr tribe, whose name means "Ringer". The actual reason for why the tribe bore this name has long since been lost to time.

Aw hell yeah it's a muskox, welcome to Dovre!

This is a mountainous municipality known for its flora & fauna, including lynx, reindeer, and of course, the muskox!

The muskox has become a symbol for the municipality and represents their values of strength, pride & stubbornness.

The Norwegian word for municipality is "kommune", which yes literally means "commune". I might switch over to using either of those terms, as doing so would help me better traverse Twitter's character limit.

Trondheim is one of the biggest cities in Norway and their municipal shield features a bishop in a church & a king in a fortress, representing the balance between church and state. The three faces at the bottom apparently represents the city council?? The 1200s were a wild time.

Trondheim is also home to the Nidaros Cathedral, the northernmost of its kind in the world.

Obviously it's haunted: there's a spooky old monk there, startling protestants.

It's a lovely morning in Høylandet ("The Hay Land") and you are a horrible swan.

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Heim is as of 2020 a brand new municipality. Their CoA is a̴ ̴s̴t̴a̴r̴ meant to represent a conglomeration of boats, seeds, fish and/or the branches of a fjord. Local industry stuff and all that jazz.

That, you know, just happens to be in the shape of a star.

The municipal shield of Brønnøy features an unusual shape; this is in fact a "seilingsgrind", a nautical guiding sign used to help ships navigate safely into port!

Brønnøy means "Well Isle", as it used to be a source of freshwater for sailors. Good thing they had those signs!

Welcome to Froland, this is a municipality located in the county of Agder and squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel it's a squirrel

Starting to realize this whole thread could've been its own gimmick account

Here we have the shield of Senja, showing off the northern lights and mountainous terrain of this Arctic region. Senja is another 2020 creation, forged from four now-defunct municipalities.

Yeah it was pretty much inevitable that the Aurora Borealis would show up somewhere.

Let's change up the pace, here's a freaking battleship! Now why would the municipality of Horten have an actual battleship on their shield? Well that's because Horten used to be the main base of the Norwegian navy until the 1960s, and they still maintain a strong presence there.

Horten used to house the Norwegian navy's top shipyard until the company running it went bankrupt in 1987; that's the 80s for you.

Here are some bonus Horten battleship shields, both the original 1907 version and the oddly colored one I found on Wikipedia.

Up next is Midt-Telemark, yet another result of the 2020 mergers! This shield is in itself a representation of the merger, as it keeps the motif of Bø while draping it in the colors of Sauherad!

The fiddles represent the local fiddling traditions, doing deals with the devil etc

I'm doing Telemark a disservice here; the one you'll actually be doing deals with for fiddle power is the Fossegrim ("Waterfall Grim"), who'll give you lessons if you offer him the smoked meat you've been stealing from your neighbour over the course of the last four Thursdays.

Targjei Augundsson, known as Myllarguten (The Millerboy) was a legendary early 19th century fiddle player who was rumored to have gotten his skills from the Fossegrim himself. His views of these claims were supposedly along the lines of "City folk will believe fucking anything."

Gjerstad lies county of Agder and they've got an entirely healthy relationship with knives. The red is a coincidence, it's just nice to see some knives absolutely bathed in red, you know?

Anyway, the knives are specifically silver so keep out if you're a werewolf I guess.

A bridge? Really Alver? Just a regular modern bridge?

Yeah this one's new as of this year too.

Moose, moose, we're the moose.
We graze at dawn we stalk at dusk, we're the moose.

Wait, where was I? Oh right this is the shield of Aremark, which directly borders Sweden. They probably miss the border shops there. Nobody goes to Sweden anymore.

Here we have an interesting case of etymology being thrown out the window, welcome to Nissedal! This municipality's name comes from the Nisser lake, but the design itself shows off the iconic red hat of the nisse (Swedish: tomte), which is a Scandinavian gnome-like creature.

In south-western Norway we find Sandnes, who choose to represent their ancient traditions of pottery by adorning their municipal shield with an ocarina! The Norwegian name for this particular ocarina design is LEIRGAUK, literally meaning "clay cuckoo"!

Nordre Follo is a 2020 creation that recently gained national infamy for being ground zero for Norway's first outbreak of the mutated UK strain of COVID-19. This promptly led to a complete and ongoing lockdown of Østlandet, the most populated of Norway's 5 administrative regions.

The fact that this outbreak specifically happened in a municipality created in 2020 feels in many ways oddly poetic.

Sør-Varanger and its capital of Kirkenes lies in the far northeast corner of Norway and is the only municipality to border Russia. Its shield is that of a three-tongued flame.
Coincidentally, this was where the Nazis first started their scorched-earth tactic against the Red Army.

As a border territory, Sør-Varanger has a complex and often tragic story. Here you'll find a history of indigenous Sámi repression and representation; cold war and hot war; Nazi occupation and Soviet bombing runs; Nazi scorched earth and Soviet liberation.

Crabs.

Note to future self: topics that involve the word "complex" aren't necessarily ideal when you're dealing with a strict character limit.