Kristiansund is a city and municipality on the northwestern coast of Norway, in the Nordmøre district of the county Møre og Romsdal. It was officially awarded township status in 1742.
Kristiansund was established as a municipality January 1, 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). The island and municipality of Grip was merged with Kristiansund January 1, 1964. The island and municipality of Frei will be merged with Kristiansund January 1, 2008.
Until 1877 the name was written Christianssund, in the period 1877-1888 Kristianssund, from 1889 on Kristiansund.
Before the introduction of postal codes in Norway in 1968 it was easy to confuse the name Kristiansund with Kristiansand in the south. It was therefore obligatory to always add an N (for north) to Kristiansund, and an S (for south) to Kristiansand.
Kristiansund is built on four islands, where Nordlandet ("North Land"), humorously called Marokko ("Morocco"), is the largest, and the site of the local airport, Kvernberget (IATA code: KSU). Gomalandet and Kirk(e)landet[3] ("Church Land"), second and third in size, are considered separate "lands" (islands) even though they are connected. The smallest island is Innlandet ("Innermost Land"; humorously, "Tahiti").
Kristiansund is one of the most densely populated cities of Norway, having what is arguably the country's most urban small city center, due to the relatively small size of the islands on which it is built and the very constricted central harbour/town area of Kirkelandet.
Kristiansund is known as the major bacalao city of Norway. Bacalao is made of salted, dried codfish,[4] and has traditionally been exported in large amounts to Spain, Portugal and Latin America as food suitable during Lent. In recent years Kristiansund has become the major oil and gas city at the northwestern coast. Oil companies like Shell and StatoilHydro have offices in Kristiansund from where they serve their offshore installations at Haltenbanken (one of the northernmost underwater oil fields in the world).
Due to the city's heavy involvement in fish processing and international shipping, there used to be as many as seven consulates in Kristiansund, mainly to Latin countries. Currently, there are only five left: Britain, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
