History
| Historical population | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
| 1951 | 117,564 | — |
| 1961 | 127,771 | +8.7% |
| 1971 | 136,805 | +7.1% |
| 1981 | 146,818 | +7.3% |
| 1991 | 146,816 | −0.0% |
| 2001 | 151,777 | +3.4% |
| 2011 | 157,554 | +3.8% |
| 2021? | 168,953 | +7.2% |
| 2031? | 176,342 | +4.4% |
| Source: Statistics Norway. | ||
Troms has been settled since the early stone age, and there are prehistoric rock carvings at several locations (for instance Ibestad and Balsfjord). These people made their living from hunting, fishing and gathering.
The first of the current ethnic groups to settle in the county were the Sami people, who inhabited Sapmi, an area much larger than today's Nordland, Troms and Finnmark counties. Archeological evidence has shown that a Norse iron-based culture in the late Roman Iron Age (200 - 400 AD), reaches as far north as Karlsøy (near today's Tromsø), but not further northeast.
The Norse with their iron and agriculture settled along the coast and in some of the larger fjords, while the Sami lived in the same fjord areas, usually just into the fjord and in the interior. From the 10th century, Norse settlements start to appear along the coast further north, reaching into what is today the county of Finnmark.
Southern and mid-Troms was a petty kingdom in the Viking age, and considered part of Hålogaland. Ottar from Hålogaland met King Alfred the Great around 890. The Viking leader Tore Hund had his seat at Bjarkøy. According to the sagas, Tore Hund speared King Olav Haraldsson at the Battle of Stiklestad. He also traded and fought in Bjarmaland, today the area of Arkhangelsk in northern Russia . Trondenes (today's Harstad) was also a central Viking power centre, and seems to have been a gathering place.
Read more about this topic: Troms
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—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
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—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)