Å is a village in

Ibestad Municipality Ibestad () is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Troms Counties of Norway, county, Norway. It is part of the Districts of Norway, traditional region of Central Hålogaland. The administrative centre of the municipality is the vil ...

Troms Troms (; ; ; ) is a Counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. It borders Finnmark county to the northeast and Nordland county in the southwest. Norrbotten Län in Sweden is located to the south and further southeast is a shorter border with ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. It is located about east of the town of Harstad on the southwest side of the island of Andørja, along the Bygda

strait A strait is a water body connecting two seas or water basins. The surface water is, for the most part, at the same elevation on both sides and flows through the strait in both directions, even though the topography generally constricts the ...

which goes between the Vågsfjorden and the

Astafjorden or is a fjord (more accurately, a strait) in Troms county, Norway. It flows through the municipalities of Salangen, Gratangen, Ibestad, and Tjeldsund. The long fjord flows from the Salangen fjord in the east to the Vågsfjorden in the we ...

. The village of Å and the neighboring villages of Laupstad and Ånstad altogether have a total population (2001) of 205 residents. The village is about north of the village of Sørvika where the undersea

Ibestad Tunnel The Ibestad Tunnel is an undersea tunnel in Ibestad Municipality in Troms county, Norway. The tunnel connects the islands of Rolla and Andørja. The western end of the tunnel begins in the village of Hamnvik on Rolla. Then the tunnel goes under ...

connects Andørja island to the neighboring island of Rolla, where

Hamnvik Hamnvik, also known as or is the administrative centre of Ibestad Municipality in Troms county, Norway. It is located on the eastern tip of the island of Rolla. The village has a population (2023) of 446 and a population density Population ...

, the municipal center is located. The village is named after the river ''Å-elva'', which flows past it from the nearby mountains of ''Snøtinden'', ''Ristindend'', and ''Åtinden''–all of which are more than above sea level.

Name

The village (originally a farm) was first mentioned in 1375 ("Aam"). The name was originally the plural of the

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

word ''á'', which means "(small) river". (There is just one river here, so the plural form might be explained by the fact that the farm was divided in two parts.)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aa, Ibestad Villages in Troms Ibestad