On 1 January 1904, the village of Harstad was granted town privileges as a ladested. On the same date, the new town was separated from the Trondenes Municipality to become a separate town-municipality of its own. Initially, the town of Harstad had 1,246 residents. The town of Harstad existed as its own municipality between 1 January 1904 until 31 December 1963.
During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1964, the town of Harstad (population: 3,808) was merged with Trondenes Municipality (population: 6,567) to the north and Sandtorg Municipality (population: 7,512) to the south, forming a new, much larger Harstad Municipality.[8]
Name
The town (and municipality) is named after the old Harstad farm (Old Norse: Harðarstaðir), since the town is built where the farm once was located.[9] The first element is (probably) the genitive case of the male name Hǫrðr. The last element is staðir which means "homestead" or "farm".[9] On 6 February 2017, the municipality of Harstad adopted a co-equal Sami language name for the municipality: Hárstták. The Sami language name spelling changes depending on how it is used. It is called Hárstták when it is spelled alone, but it is Hársttáid suohkan when using the Sami language equivalent to "Harstad municipality".[6][10]
The city of Harstad is part of Harstad Municipality. The urban city area itself is not self-governing, but rather the mayor and municipal council for the whole municipality oversees the city and entire municipality. From 1904 until 1963, the city and the municipality were coterminous, but since 1964, the municipality has been much more than just the city.
