About Local Norway

Local Norway is a directory of local businesses across all 15 counties (fylker) and Svalbard: restaurants and cafés, hotels, clinics, schools, workshops, shops and services, with the phone number, address, opening hours and Google rating you need before you go.

What we are for

Most people looking for a place already know roughly what they want: a dentist in Oslo, a bakery near Bryggen in Bergen, a bike repair shop in Trondheim open on Saturday. We built Local Norway to answer that question in two clicks, on a phone with a slow connection, without an app, an account or a cookie wall.

Problems we see

• Ranking driven by advertising. On many platforms the top spots go to whoever pays most, not to whoever serves customers best.
• Small businesses are buried. A family bakery with 400 happy reviews has no marketing budget and no way to be found by a visitor two streets away.
• Information goes stale. Hours change, phone numbers change, shops move, and nobody updates the page.
• Norwegian-only or English-only. Residents, international students, expats and travellers use different words for the same street and the same district, and many places in the north also have Sámi or Kven names.

How Local Norway is different

Ranking is never for sale

Within a category and a place, businesses are ordered by a rating score that weighs the average rating against the number of reviews, so a 4.8 from 300 reviews stands above a 5.0 from 2. We do sell featured placements; they sit in a separate, labelled block and never change the organic order underneath. Verified listings are not ranked higher either.

Data from the source, kept fresh

Listings are compiled from publicly available business information, chiefly Google Business Profiles, and refreshed by an automatic pass that walks every county and category. Ratings, review counts and the latest reviews are shown as Google reports them at our last update, and photos are loaded straight from Google rather than copied. Business owners can claim their listing to correct anything and keep it current.

Two languages, one directory

Every page exists in Norwegian and in English with the same address, so a link you share works for a colleague who reads the other language. Place names are shown the way locals write them and the way visitors search for them.

Discovery, not gatekeeping

We are a bridge between people and businesses, not a middleman. Every listing links straight to the business’s own phone number, website and Google Maps entry. No bookings pass through us, no commissions, and the customer relationship stays with the owner.

Our values

• Quality wins. Good service should be found. Rankings follow ratings and reviews, never payment.
• Honesty about what we know. Data can be out of date; we say where it came from and when, and we make correcting it easy.
• Fair discovery. A new café and a chain hotel get the same page, the same fields, the same chance.

How we make money

Some links on this site are affiliate or sponsored links. If you book or buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We also show advertising and sell labelled featured placements. None of this affects the organic ranking or the wording of a listing.

Corrections and removals

If a listing is wrong, closed or should not be here, use Request removal at the bottom of the listing page, email us or use the notice and takedown process. Owners can claim a listing to edit it themselves.

Our commitments

• We never sell organic ranking.
• We never sell personal data.
• We label paid content.
• We fix or remove wrong information when told.
• We keep the site fast, light and readable on any device (accessibility statement).

Read the terms of use, the privacy policy, the claim verification policy and the service provider details.