In a democracy, the state power comes from the people, and we all have joint responsibility for the society we live in. As citizens of Norway we have both rights and responsibilities. The constitution consists of rules regarding the type of government, human rights and distribution of power between the Storting, government and judiciary. The government exercises its power through governmental administrative bodies on a central and regional/local level. The county governor is the government's representative in the counties. Regional and local publicly elected bodies (county councils and municipal councils) have power delegated from the Storting.

Did you know

... that Deichman library has a web site for immigrants?

Bazar is a multilingual information web service provided by the Deichman Library. Here you can find out about Norwegian employment issues, family matters, language learning, health, housing, government, integration & racial concerns, religion and more.

Also, the Ministry of Education and Research has cooperated with the Cappelen publishing house to produce Intro - an online introduction to Norwegian social studies for adult immigrants.

Other topic-related information including laws, regulations and online services exist, but with limited English texts or in Norwegian only. If you would like to view information in Norwegian, click on the Bokmål, or Nynorsk, menu choice in the top banner above.