Nærøysund

Nærøysund is a municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Namdalen. The municipality was established on 1 January 2020 after the merger of the old municipalities of Vikna and Nærøy. The municipality is unique in that it has two equal administrative centre: Kolvereid and Rørvik. The other main population centres of Nærøysund include Abelvær, Foldereid, Gravvik, Ottersøy, Salsbruket, Steine, Torstad, Austafjord, Garstad, and Valøya. The municipality is the 70th largest by area out of the 356 municipalities in Norway. Nærøysund is the 114th most populous municipality in Norway with a population of 9,732. The municipality's population density is and its population has increased by 4.5% over the previous 10-year period. The municipality was established on 1 January 2020 when the neighboring municipalities of Nærøy and Vikna were merged. The small Lund area of Nærøy was not part of the merger, it instead was merged with the large Namsos Municipality to the south on the same date. The merger came about because on 8 June 2017, the Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, voted to merge the municipalities of Leka, Vikna, Nærøy, and Bindal to form one, large municipality effective 1 January 2020. Leka and Bindal municipalities rejected the merger, but Vikna and Nærøy agreed to the merger so it was carried out in 2020. The municipality is named after the Nærøysundet strait which is located in the municipality. The strait is named after the nearby island Nærøya (Njarðøy). The first element is maybe the stem form of the name of the Norse god Njord (but it is suspicious that it is not in the genitive case). The last element is øy which means "island". The coat of arms was approved for use starting on 1 January 2020. The blazon is "Argent, two bars wavy intertwined vert and azure". This means the arms have a field (background) that has a tincture of argent which means it is commonly colored white, but if it is made out of metal, then silver is used. The charge is two intertwined stripes, one green and one blue.