More European citizens in Norway

After three years of little or no growth in the number of foreign citizens in Norway, 1998 brought an increase of all of 7,100 persons. The increment from 1997 to 1998 was 400. Last year's increase is attributed to more European citizens. Norway had 165,000 foreign citizens at the turn of the year, accounting for 3.7 per cent of the population.

More than 108,000 European nationals lived in Norway on 1 January. They made up 66 per cent of all foreigners in Norway. The number of European citizens increased by 7,200 over the course of 1998, with Swedes accounting for the largest portion, about 47 per cent, of the overall increase. Swedes (24,000) and Danes (19,100) make up the largest groups of foreign citizens, following by Bosnians and Brits at 11,800 and 11,200 respectively.

Number of Swedes still rising

The influx of Swedish citizens continues. The increase was 3,400 in 1998, about the same as the year before. There are now 24,000 Swedish citizens living in Norway, double as many as in 1993. The number of citizens from the other Nordic countries increased by between 400 and 650 each in 1998. Citizens from the other Nordic countries make up 72 per cent of all European nationals living in Norway.

Asians become Norwegian citizens

While the increase in the number of European, and above all Nordic citizens continues, 1998 saw a reduction in Asian citizens, whose numbers have been falling every year since 1994. Norway had 31,100 Asian nationals at the turn of the year, down more than 14,000 from 1994. The trend is first and foremost connected to the fact that many Asians have become Norwegian citizens in the past four years. The groups seeing the largest decreases were the Vietnamese and Pakistanis, the same groups which had the highest number of naturalizations.

New Statistics
Population statistics. Foreign citizens, 1 January 1999.
The statistics are published annually in the Weekly Bulletin of Statistics, Current Population Statistics and in Official Statistics of Norway (NOS) Regional Statistics. For more information contact: Kare.Reidar.Hoiby@ssb.no, tel. +47 62 88 52 97, or Trude.Jakobsen@ssb.no, tel. +47 62 88 51 39. The Population Statistics Answering Service is open from 09.00 to 12.00, tel. +47 62 88 54 00.

Weekly Bulletin issue no. 22, 1999