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 ...

's geography is dominated by

fjord In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Ice ...

s and

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

s. As of 2011, the country has thirty-three

undersea tunnel An underwater tunnel is a tunnel which is partly or wholly constructed under the sea or a river. They are often used where building a bridge or operating a ferry link is unviable, or to provide competition or relief for existing bridges or ferry li ...

s, most of which are

fixed link A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

s. Tunnels are chosen to replace

ferries A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water tax ...

to allow residents of islands and remote peninsulas access to regional centers, where water-crossings are too long for bridges. The

Bømlafjord Tunnel The Bømlafjord Tunnel ( no, Bømlafjordtunnelen) is a subsea road tunnel under Bømlafjorden which connects the island of Føyno in Stord Municipality to the mainland at Dalshovda in Sveio Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. The tunnel is ...

is the country's longest, at . Its length is surpassed by that of the

Karmøy Tunnel The Karmøy Tunnel ( no, Karmøytunnelen) was the longest subsea road tunnel in Norway until the opening of Ryfast in 2019, and is located in the municipalities of Karmøy and Tysvær in Rogaland county. At long, it links the island of Karmøy ...

, which opened September 5, 2013. The

Eiksund Tunnel The Eiksund tunnel ( no, Eiksundtunnelen) is an undersea tunnel in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway, which runs under the Vartdalsfjorden connecting the municipalities of Ørsta and Ulstein. The tunnel is long and reaches a depth of below sea le ...

is the world's deepest, reaching below mean

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...

. Norway's first subsea tunnel was the

Vardø Tunnel The Vardø Tunnel ( no, Vardøtunnelen) is a subsea road tunnel in Vardø Municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The long two-lane tunnel under the Bussesundet strait connects the island of Vardøya to the village of Svartnes on th ...

, which opened in 1982. Most of the tunnels are built as fixed links, allowing ferry services to be abandoned. In 2010, the first three tunnel in cities, the Bjørvika Tunnel, the Skansen Tunnel and the

Knappe Tunnel The Knappe Tunnel ( no, Knappetunnelen) is a four-lane, twin-tube motorway tunnel in the city-municipality of Bergen in Vestland county, Norway. The tunnel is part of Norwegian County Road 557, County Road 557 and consists of the first and second ...

, were opened, all of which were built as motorways to bypass the city center. Suspended tunnels have been proposed, which could be installed in places too deep for conventional tunnels, such as the

Sognefjord The Sognefjord or Sognefjorden (, en, Sogn Fjord), nicknamed the King of the Fjords ( no, Fjordenes konge), is the largest and deepest fjord in Norway. Located in Vestland county in Western Norway, it stretches inland from the ocean to the smal ...

Current

The following lists all subsea tunnels in use as of 2011. It includes the name, length in meters and feet, depth below mean sea level in meters and feet, the year the tunnel was taken into use with ordinary traffic (which may differ from the year it was officially opened), the road the tunnel carries, the

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

or counties the tunnel is in, and the

municipalities A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

, including any the tunnel passes through. Roads starting with E indicates a

European route The international E-road network is a numbering system for roads in Europe developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The network is numbered from E1 up and its roads ...

, while FV indicates a county road without signposted road number; only numbers indicates roadside-numbered county roads which are former national roads.

Under construction

The following tunnels are under construction, but are not yet completed or taken into use.

Proposed

The following includes tunnels which have been proposed and which are either being planned by the Norwegian Public Road Administration, or are in the National Transport Plan 2010–2019. Projects which have been abandoned or have not been subject to public investigations are not included. Several of the most trafficked ferry sections are not currently proposed, as the fjords are too deep to have a tunnel with current technology. As of 2011, there are 160 ferry crossings in the country, the majority of which could potentially be replaced by fixed links. For the authorities, the decision to build new tunnels depends on the length, possibility of building a bridge, depth of the sound or fjord and population in the affected areas. While the first tunnels were mostly part of fixed links to connect island and sealocked communities to the mainland, focus has recently shifted more towards replacing ferries on main roads connecting regions, in particular

European Route E39 European route E39 is the designation of a north–south road in Norway and Denmark from Klett, just south of Trondheim, to Aalborg via Bergen, Stavanger and Kristiansand. In total, there are nine ferries, more than any other single road in Eu ...

, which runs along the west coast. The largest proposal is for E39

Rogfast Rogaland Fixed Link or simply the Rogfast is a project, constructing a sub-sea road tunnel between the municipalities of Randaberg (near the city of Stavanger) and Bokn in Rogaland county, Norway. The tunnel will be called the Boknafjord tunnel ...

, which would replace four ferry services, and would become the world's longest road tunnel and the world's deepest tunnel.

Current

Under construction

Proposed

References

See also