Varangerhalvøya National Park

Varangerhalvøya National Park (Norwegian: Varangerhalvøya nasjonalpark) lies on the Varanger Peninsula in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. It is located in the municipalities of Båtsfjord, Nesseby, Vadsø, and Vardø, in the northeasternmost part of Norway. The peninsula was earlier the largest area within the Arctic climate zone in mainland Norway, but with the 1991-2020 normals, much of the area is boreal rather than arctic.[1][2] Much of the area is still alpine tundra.

Varangerhalvøya National Park
LocationFinnmark, Norway
Nearest cityVadsø
Coordinates70°20′N 29°38′E
Area1,804.1 km2 (445,800 acres)
Established2006
Governing bodyDirectorate for Nature Management

Flora and fauna

Since species from the Arctic, eastern Siberia, and more southerly areas all occur together on the Varanger Peninsula, the plant life is distinctive. The small deciduous woodlands in the area are among the northernmost in the world.

Lime-rich bedrock and soil in the north supports rich pockets containing rare species like Papaver dahlianum (a poppy), field fleawort, Svalbard snow cinquefoil , and Arenaria pseudofrigida (a sandwort).

The peninsula still has a complete alpine ecosystem with reindeer (domesticated), wolverine, and Arctic fox. The latter is the most endangered mammal species of Norway. A special programme based on reducing the number of the dominant red fox has shown very good results (per 2008) for the small Arctic fox population.

Important Bird Area

An area of about 200,000 ha of the peninsula, largely coinciding with the national park, has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports breeding populations of many birds, including lesser white-fronted geese, long-tailed ducks, common scoters, greater scaups, Eurasian golden plovers, bar-tailed godwits, ruddy turnstones, Temminck's stints, dunlins, purple sandpipers, little stints, red-necked phalaropes, spotted redshanks, long-tailed jaegers, Arctic jaegers, pomarine jaegers, short-eared owls, snowy owls, rough-legged buzzards, gyrfalcons, red-throated pipits, lapland longspurs and snow buntings.[3]

Fish hung out to dry on the peninsula.

Name

The last element is the finite form of halvøy ("peninsula"). The meaning of the first part of the name is originally the name of a fjord, (Old Norse: Ver(j)angr). The first part is ver meaning "fishing village" and the last part is angr which means "fjord".[4]

References
  1. "Weather statistics for Båtsfjord as a table - Last 13 months".
  2. "Weather statistics for Vardø radio as a table - Last 13 months".
  3. "Varanger Peninsula". BirdLife Data Zone. BirdLife International. 2021. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
  4. Store norske leksikon. "Varanger" (in Norwegian). Retrieved 2013-02-25.


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