Å (, from meaning "stream") or Å i Lofoten () is a village in

Moskenes Municipality Moskenes is a municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The municipality comprises the southern part of the island of Moskenesøya in the traditional district of Lofoten. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Reine. O ...

Nordland Nordland (; , , , ) is one of the three northernmost Counties of Norway, counties in Norway in the Northern Norway region, bordering Troms in the north, Trøndelag in the south, Norrbotten County in Sweden to the east, Västerbotten County to t ...

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 southwest of the village of Sørvågen on the island of

Moskenesøya Moskenesøya () is an island at the southern end of the Lofoten archipelago in Nordland county, Norway. The island is shared between Moskenes Municipality and Flakstad Municipality. The tidal whirlpool system known as Moskstraumen, one of th ...

, towards the southern end of the

Lofoten Lofoten ( , ; ; ) is an archipelago and a Districts of Norway, traditional district in the county of Nordland, Norway. Lofoten has distinctive scenery with dramatic mountains and peaks, open sea and sheltered bays, beaches, and untouched lands. T ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

. It is connected to the rest of the archipelago by the

European route E10 European route E10 is the second shortest Class A road which is part of the International E-road network. It begins in Å, Norway, and ends in Luleå, Sweden. The road is about in length. The Norwegian part of the road is also named Kong Ol ...

highway, which ends here. This part of the highway is also called King Olav's Road. Until the 1990s, Å was mainly a small

fishing village A fishing village is a village, usually located near a fishing ground, with an economy based on catching fish and harvesting seafood. The continents and islands around the world have coastlines totalling around 356,000 kilometres (221,000 ...

specializing in

stockfish Stockfish is unsalted fish, especially cod, dried by cold air and wind on wooden racks (which are called "hjell" in Norway) on the foreshore. The drying of food is the world's oldest known preservation method, and dried fish has a storage li ...

, but since then

tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure, and the Commerce, commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. World Tourism Organization, UN Tourism defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as ...

has taken over as the main economic activity. The town features the Lofoten Stockfish Museum and the Norwegian Fishing Village Museum as two big tourist attractions.

Name

The village (originally a farm) is first known to be mentioned in 1567 as "Aa". The name is from

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". The name was spelled "''Aa"'' until 1917 when the

Norwegian language Norwegian ( ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelli ...

reform changed the letter "''aa"'' to "''å"''. The village is sometimes referred to as Å i Lofoten (''"i"'' means "in") to distinguish it from other meanings that go by Å (see

Å (disambiguation) Å (historically ''Aa'') is a letter used in several Scandinavian, High German, and Finno-Permic languages. Å may also refer to: Places Å ( or ) means ''stream'' or ''river'' in Scandinavian languages. A number of places have been named Å: ...

In media

In 2008,

Joanna Lumley Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley (born 1 May 1946) is an Indian-born British actress, presenter, author, television producer, activist and former model. She has won two BAFTA TV Awards for her role as Patsy Stone in the BBC sitcom ''Absolutely Fabulo ...

visited Å in the Lofoten Islands, for the

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television b ...

television documentary ''Joanna Lumley: In the Land of the Northern Lights''; where she learned about the village's fishing heritage, during her journey to see the

aurora borealis An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

Legacy

The city of Å has achieved notable popularity on the internet due to its short name.

Notable people

* Hank von Hell, a rock singer who was brought up here

References

External links

The Lofoten Stockfish Museum

Moskenes Villages in Nordland Populated places in Nordland {{Nordland-geo-stub