( Norwegian; ) or is an

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

Tromsø Municipality Tromsø Municipality is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Troms county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the Tromsø (city), city of Tromsø. Other notable settlements in the municipality include the vi ...

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 ...

. At , it is the fifth largest island in mainland

. It is connected to the neighboring island of Tromsøya to the east by the Sandnessund Bridge, to the island of Ringvassøya to the north by the sub-sea Kvalsund Tunnel, to the small island of Sommarøya to the west by the Sommarøy Bridge, and to the mainland to the south by the Rya Tunnel. The island of Sommarøy, on the southwest coast, is a popular recreation area with magnificent coastal scenery.

Geography

Kvaløya is a mountainous island, with at least ten mountains higher than , and three reaching an elevation of more than ; of which the highest is Store Blåmann (''big blueman'' at , can be climbed without climbing equipment, last part is steep). There are also several small fjords, almost dividing the island in two or three parts: Kaldfjorden, Ersfjorden, and Kattfjorden. The Rystraumen is a tidal current in the Straumsfjorden strait separating Kvaløya from the mainland to the south. Near this current, on the Kvaløya side, is ''Straumhella'' ( from the city), a popular recreation area with good fishing opportunities. Ryøya is an island in the midst of Rystraumen, formerly home to a small population of musk oxen that lived in the

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. ''World Flora Online'' accepts 134 species-rank taxa (119 species and 15 nothospecies) of pines as cu ...

forest. The last musk ox, known as Alma, was discovered dead in 2013; an autopsy revealed that she had plastic in her stomach. Someone had left the rings of a beer six-pack behind on the island and Alma was found to have eaten them.

Demography

Approximately 13,000 people live on Kvaløya, most of them on the eastern side near Kvaløysletta (which constitutes a suburban area of the city of Tromsø) near the Sandnessund Bridge.

Climate

According to official climate statistics, the west coast of Kvaløya, facing the open ocean, is the warmest part of Tromsø municipality. The weather station at Sommarøy on the west coast has 24-hr averages of in January, in July and a mean annual temperature of , while annual precipitation is .

Media gallery

Skulsfjord troms norway.jpg, The mountains of Kvaløya seen from Skulsfjord Midday on Kvaløya.JPG, Midday twilight on Kvaløya in winter Ersfjorden 2012.JPG, View of the Ersfjorden Rekvik på Kvarløya - P1.jpg, Rekvik village on Kvaløya Tromsö IMG 3233 Kvalöya Sandnessundet.JPG, Tromsøya (right) and Kvaløya (left) 37663 Skavberget 3. Rock carvings at Tromsø..jpg, Rock carvings at Skavberget Kaldfjord, Tromsø (2014).jpg, Village of Kaldfjord Kvaloysletta kvaloya tromso.JPG, Kvaløysletta

References

External links