Trondheim, Norway

Trondheim, Norway: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Trondheim is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, situated on the south shore of Trondheim Fjord at the mouth of the River Nidelva. As Norway's third most populous municipality, it occupies a significant position along the Norwegian coastline. Two submarine cables make landfall at Trondheim, connecting it to other points within Norway and establishing it as a domestic cable landing point on the country's western and northern seaboard.

Both cables landing at Trondheim — the Polar Circle Cable and N0r5ke Viking — link Norwegian endpoints exclusively, meaning this landing point serves a domestic rather than intercontinental corridor. Together, they position Trondheim within the broader Norwegian submarine cable network, which spans 18 cables across 43 landing points nationwide.

Cables Landing at Trondheim

Polar Circle Cable is a submarine cable measuring 1,004 km in length, with a Ready for Service (RFS) date of 2007. It connects Norwegian endpoints, running between landing points located entirely within Norway. Trondheim forms one of the cable's termini along this domestic Norwegian route.

N0r5ke Viking is a submarine cable measuring 810 km in length, with a Ready for Service (RFS) date of 2022. Like the Polar Circle Cable, it links landing points entirely within Norway, providing a more recently commissioned domestic connection. Its landing at Trondheim represents one of the newer additions to the city's submarine cable infrastructure.

Regional Context

Within Norway's submarine cable landscape, Trondheim ranks among the mid-tier landing points by cable count. Kristiansand leads the country with seven cables, while Stavanger hosts four, Bergen and Bodø each host three, and Longyearbyen and Kårstø each host two — the same number as Trondheim. With two cables, Trondheim sits in the top 88 percent of Norway's 43 landing points by cable count, reflecting a modest but established presence in the national network.

Network Role

Trondheim functions as a domestic cable hub, with both of its submarine cables connecting points exclusively within Norway. The Polar Circle Cable, commissioned in 2007, and the more recent N0r5ke Viking, commissioned in 2022, together provide two distinct fiber routes linking Trondheim into Norway's internal submarine cable graph. The presence of two cables — rather than one — means the city is not a single-cable terminus but a point with a degree of redundancy within the domestic Norwegian corridor.

Norway's average submarine cable length across all landing points is 1,024 km, and both cables landing at Trondheim fall close to or within that range, at 1,004 km and 810 km respectively. The addition of N0r5ke Viking in 2022 extended Trondheim's connectivity footprint within the domestic network, reinforcing the city's place as a consistent node in Norway's evolving submarine cable infrastructure.