Loppa (

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

: ''Loppa''), ( sme, Láhppi) is an

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 isla ...

Loppa Municipality Loppa ( sme, Láhppi and fkv, Lappea) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Øksfjord. Other villages in Loppa include Andsnes, Bergsfjord, Langfjordhamn, Loppa, ...

Troms og Finnmark Troms og Finnmark (; sme, Romsa ja Finnmárku ; fkv, Tromssa ja Finmarkku; fi, Tromssa ja Finnmark, lit. Troms and Finnmark in English), is a county in northern Norway that was established on 1 January 2020 as the result of a regional reform. ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, 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 ...

. The island lies in the

Lopphavet Lopphavet is a stretch of open sea along the border of Troms og Finnmark and Troms og Finnmark counties in Norway. It has a width of about , and it stretches between the large island of Sørøya in Finnmark and the islands of Arnøya and Nord-Fugl ...

Sea in the western part of the municipality, west of the island of Silda. The small island has one village area (called ''Loppa'') on the southeastern coast. This village used to be the

administrative centre An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune is located. In countries with French as administrative language (such as Belgium, Lu ...

of Loppa and an important

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 ...

for the municipality, but all of the administration of the village was moved to

Øksfjord Øksfjord ( sme, Ákšovuotna) is a village in Norway. Øksfjord is visited by the coastal service Hurtigruten boat daily, stopping here between stops at Skjervøy and Hammerfest. Since most of Loppa municipality is inaccessible by car, Øksfjor ...

on the mainland. Today, Loppa Church is still located in this village, but there are only a few residents remaining on the island.

History

Roman Age

Little is known of this period historically and archaeologically on Loppa. However the discovering of a

Roman Age In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–50 ...

longhouse from 120 AD, at the island of Loppa shows the earliest signs of settlement in the

Early Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

. This may have been the beginning of Norse and Sami collaboration in the area, and of the interaction between the two peoples with trade and commerce in fishing and the industry of hunting of maritime mammals. The longhouse is also one of the oldest discovered in

Northern Norway Northern Norway ( nb, Nord-Norge, , nn, Nord-Noreg; se, Davvi-Norga) is a geographical region of Norway, consisting of the two northernmost counties Nordland and Troms og Finnmark, in total about 35% of the Norwegian mainland. Some of the lar ...

Viking Age

In 1962 a rich female

Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Germ ...

grave was discovered on the island of Loppa. It contained luxurious personal objects such as tortoise brooches, a round brooch in the Oseberg style, a whalebone plaque, beads, knife, scissor and an arrowhead. The female grave was dubbed "The Queens Grave" due to the manner in which she was buried; however, she was most likely not a queen but an important person indeed on Viking Age Loppa, perhaps the housewife of a local chieftain. The wealth of the grave reflects that of the Norse elite's presence in the area. The burial was dated to the 9th century AD. In 1964 a longhouse from the Viking Age was also discovered and dated to the end of the 8th century AD. Several other buildings and boathouses were also discovered and dated to the same period as the longhouse and the rich female grave. There are also several burials from the Iron Age on the island, the biggest a burial cairn some 13 m in diameter. The number of Iron Age burials and houses suggest the presence of a permanent Norse settlement.

Middle Ages

In the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, the hunting and the production of oil from marine mammals apparently ended, and fishing became more important. Along the coast of northern Norway we see so-called farm mounds of ancient settlements, and there are at least six farm mounds on the island of Loppa, on Silda, and on the mainland at Andsnes. However, the farm mounds of northern Norway seem to have their upbringing already in Early Iron Age, suggesting that fishing was already a commercial trade before the Middle Ages. On the island of Loppa one of the farm mounds was dated to the 1100s AD, with a church site close by. This suggests that Loppa was already a parish in the Middle Ages.

Nature reserve

The western cliffs and steep slopes of the island form a nature reserve which was established in 1983. This, along with the adjacent marine waters, has also been designated a

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Inte ...

(IBA) by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

because it supports large breeding colonies of

Atlantic puffin The Atlantic puffin ('), also known as the common puffin, is a species of seabird in the auk family. It is the only puffin native to the Atlantic Ocean; two related species, the tufted puffin and the horned puffin is found in the northeastern ...

s and

razorbill The razorbill, razor-billed auk, or lesser auk (''Alca torda'') is a colonial seabird and the only extant member of the genus '' Alca'' of the family Alcidae, the auks. It is the closest living relative of the extinct great auk (''Pinguinis im ...

References