Storselsøya (also known as Selsøya or Hestmona) 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 ...

Nordland Nordland (; , , , ) is one of the three northernmost Counties of Norway, counties in Norway in the Northern Norway region, bordering Troms in the north, Trøndelag in the south, Norrbotten County in Sweden to the east, Västerbotten County to t ...

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 ...

. The island is divided between two municipalities:

Rødøy Municipality Rødøy is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Nordland Counties of Norway, county, Norway. It is part of the Helgeland Districts of Norway, traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Våga ...

in the north and

Lurøy Municipality Lurøy is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Nordland Counties of Norway, county, Norway. It is part of the Helgeland Districts of Norway, traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is located on the island ...

in the south. The island of Nesøya lies to the west, the island of Lurøya lies to the south, and the mainland village of

Tonnes The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the s ...

lies to the east. The northern and eastern parts of the island are flat and marshy. The

Arctic Circle The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the northernmost of the five major circle of latitude, circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth at about 66° 34' N. Its southern counterpart is the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic Circl ...

crosses the northern part of the island. There are ferry connections to the surrounding islands and to the mainland at Jektvika. The tall mountain Hestmonkallen is located in the southwest.

Name

The name of the island has varied over time and not all have agreed on the name. In 2014, the appeal board for the

Norwegian Language Council The Language Council of Norway (, ) is the administrative body of the Norwegian state on language issues. It regulates the two written forms of the Norwegian language: Bokmål and Nynorsk. It was established in 2005 and replaced the Norwegian Lan ...

made a final decision on the name of the island. They decided that the main name of the island would be ''Storselsøya'' and that name would also refer to the northern part of the island in

. ''Hestmona'' would be an official name that refers to the southern part of the island. The board also approved ''Selsøya'' as an alternate name. A minority on the appeal board wanted ''Hestmannøy'' to refer to the southern part in

, but that was not approved. Historically, the island was known as Hestmona because of the main mountain on the island was known as ''Hestmonkallen''.

References

Islands of Nordland Rødøy Lurøy {{Nordland-island-stub

Name

See also

References