Narvik

Narvik is a municipality in Norway's Nordland county, north of the Arctic Circle, with 21,580 residents in 2024. Developed in the 1870s as an ice-free port for exporting Swedish iron ore from the mines at Kiruna and Gallivare, it became strategically vital during the Second World War, when Winston Churchill judged that controlling the port could cut off Germany's winter iron ore supply, and the 1940 Battles of Narvik brought the first Allied infantry victory of the war before Allied forces withdrew that June; today it remains the largest harbor in northern Norway, shipping about 25 million tons of Swedish iron ore annually.