Harstad (town)

Harstad (, Hárstták ) is a town in Harstad Municipality in Troms county, Norway. The town is also the administrative centre of the municipality of Harstad. The 11.15 km2 town has a population (2023) of 21,289 which gives the town a population density of 1879 PD/km2. It is the second-largest town in Troms county, after the city of Tromsø, and it is the largest town in Central Hålogaland.

The town is located on the northeastern part of the large island of Hinnøya, along the Vågsfjorden. The town is made up of several areas including Gangsås, Grønnebakkan, Kanebogen, Medkila, Sama, Seljestad, and Stangnes, and Trondenes. There are two churches of the Church of Norway in the town: Harstad Church and Kanebogen Church. The historic Trondenes Church lies on the north edge of the town, near the Trondenes Fort.

History
On 1 January 1904, the village of Harstad was granted town privileges as a ladested. On the same date, the new town was separated from the Trondenes Municipality to become a separate town-municipality of its own. Initially, the town of Harstad had 1,246 residents. The town of Harstad existed as its own municipality between 1 January 1904 until 31 December 1963.

During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1964, the town of Harstad (population: 3,808) was merged with Trondenes Municipality (population: 6,567) to the north and Sandtorg Municipality (population: 7,512) to the south, forming a new, much larger Harstad Municipality.

Name
The town (and municipality) is named after the old Harstad farm (Harðarstaðir), since the town is built where the farm once was located. The first element is (probably) the genitive case of the male name Hǫrðr. The last element is which means "homestead" or "farm". On 6 February 2017, the municipality of Harstad adopted a co-equal Sami language name for the municipality: Hárstták. The Sami language name spelling changes depending on how it is used. It is called Hárstták when it is spelled alone, but it is Hársttáid suohkan when using the Sami language equivalent to "Harstad municipality".