Bakka is a tiny village in

Aurland Municipality Aurland () is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in the Counties of Norway, county of Vestland, Norway. It is located on the south side of the Sognefjorden in the Districts of Norway, traditional district of Sogn. The administrativ ...

Vestland Vestland is a county in Norway established on 1 January 2020. The county is located in Western Norway and it is centred around the city of Bergen, Norway's second largest city. The administrative centre of the county is the city of Bergen, where t ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. It is located on the western shore of the

Nærøyfjord The Nærøyfjord (or ''Nærøyfjorden'', ) is a fjord in Aurland Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The narrow fjord is a branch of the large Sognefjord, and it is featured on the "Norway in a Nutshell" daytrips for tourists. The long fjo ...

, about north of the village of

Gudvangen Gudvangen is a village in Aurland Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is a popular tourist destination and is located at the end of the Nærøyfjord where the Nærøydalselvi river empties into the fjord. The European route E16 highway pa ...

and access to the

European route E16 European route E16 is the designation of a main west-east road through Northern Ireland, Scotland, Norway and Sweden, from Derry to Gävle, via Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, previously by ferry to Bergen, Voss, through the Gudvanga Tunnel and th ...

highway. The village is home to the

Bakka Church Bakka Church ( no, Bakka kyrkje) is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Aurland Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is located in the village of Bakka, on the shores of the sparsely populated Nærøyfjorden. It is the church for ...

. In 2000, the Bakka Tunnel was constructed on the road from Gudvangen to Bakka to make the journey quicker and safer.

Name

The name ''Bakka'' is derived from the

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is 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 of Scandinavia and t ...

word ''bakki'' which means "(river) bank". The ''-a'' ending is the

dative case In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...

ending used with prepositions to show location: "on the bank". In the 19th century, it was common to spell the name ''Bakke''.

Media gallery

File:Bakka Nærøyfjorden.jpg, View of Bakka File:Village in Norway.jpg, Bakka File:Bakka kirke.jpg, Bakka Church File:Bakka kyrkje.jpg, Village and church File:Tourist boat in Nærøyfjorden.jpg, Overview of Bakka and Nærøyfjord

References

Villages in Vestland Aurland {{Vestland-geo-stub