or is a
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, Icela ...
in
Alta Municipality
( se, Áltá ; fkv, Alattio; fi, Alattio) is the most populated municipality in Finnmark in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Alta. Some of the main villages in the municipality i ...
in
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 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 ...
. The long fjord branches off the main
Altafjorden. The village of
Kåfjord and the
Kåfjord Church
Kåfjord Church ( no, Kåfjord kirke) is a parish church of the Church of Norway in Gáivuotna–Kåfjord Municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. It is located in the village of Olderdalen. It is the church for the Kåfjord parish whic ...
both lie along the northern coast of the fjord. The
European route E06
European route E6 ( no, Europavei 6, sv, Europaväg 6, or simply E6) is the main north-south thoroughfare through Norway as well as the west coast of Sweden. It is long and runs from the southern tip of Sweden at Trelleborg, into Norway and t ...
highway follows the northern shoreline of the fjord. A bridge over Kåfjorden was built in 2013 to shorten the E6 highway route around the fjord.
The fjord was the anchorage of the
German battleship ''Tirpitz'' for much of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, which was attacked by British