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Living in Norway: How safe is Oslo?

Frazer Norwell
Frazer Norwell - [email protected]
Living in Norway: How safe is Oslo?
Is Oslo a safe city? We've gone over the stats and facts. Pictured is Oslo at night. Photo by Gunnar Ridderström on Unsplash

Norway, generally, is an incredibly safe country with a low rate of serious crimes. However, does this apply to the capital of Oslo?

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Just under 80 percent of Oslo residents say that they feel the capital is a safe city to live in, according to a survey carried out on behalf of public broadcaster NRK and the newspaper Aftenposten.

Additionally, 12.5 percent said that they didn’t feel safe, while 10 percent said they weren’t sure whether they felt safe or not.

More men than women said that they felt safe in the capital, and twice the amount of women than men said that they felt unsafe in Oslo.

The survey also found that there wasn’t a significant difference in which parts of the city residents felt safest in. The only exception was the centre of the city east of the Akerselva, which was the part of town people felt safest.

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Governing mayor of Oslo, Raymond Johansen, has welcomed the figures.

“These are important and good figures, which confirm what I have said before. Oslo is a safe city for the vast majority. Those who sometimes live dangerously are the criminals themselves,” he told Aftenposten.

Crime figures also point towards Oslo as a relatively safe city. It is actually the county in Norway with the lowest crime rate in the country, according to figures from Statistics Norway.

However, these figures may be skewed by Oslo’s large population. Still, it has a lower crime rate than Viken county, which has a larger population than Oslo.

The crime rate in Oslo per 1,000 residents was 38.71 in 2021, according to Statistics Norway. Figures for 2022 were not available at the time of writing.

When measured by total incidents, Oslo had the second-highest number of crimes reported out of all of Norway’s counties. Only Viken County had a marginally higher number of crimes reported.

One trend that may concern residents in Oslo is increased police reports of violence involving firearms. In 2021, eight people were shot in the capital.

A report on crime in Oslo said that substance abuse, mental health and increased tensions within criminal environments, such as between gangs, were contributing factors to the increase in gun crime.

According to the survey published by NRK and Aftenposten, four-tenths said they had become more cautious. Still, seven out of ten said that they had faith and confidence in the local police, even if a large proportion said that they were hardly visible on the capital’s streets.

In Oslo, property theft was the most likely offence to be committed, according to figures from Statistics Norway. Out of 57,00 crimes reported in 2021, 21,000 were property theft, such as bike theft or burglary.

The next most common crimes were violence and maltreatment, public order offences, criminal damage and drug and alcohol offences. In 2021, there were 1,846 sexual offences reported to the police in Oslo.

Do you think Oslo is safe? 

Is Oslo a safe city, or has the Norwegian capital keeping you on edge. Please take a few moments to fill out our survey and we'll try and include you responses in a future article.

 

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