According to the statistics for January 1, 2004, there are about 670 Russian and Ukrainian citizens in Oslo, 255 in Trondheim, 300 in Bergen, 180 in Stavanger (the numbers however do not include those living in the nearby areas of these cities). The number of Russian+Ukrainian citizens for the whole country is almost 7000. These figures are somewhat lower than the true Russian population of Norway, as explained above, and because we tend to call a person from any ex-Soviet Union state Russian, for clarity. Most of them speak Russian very well and have similar cultural background, anyway.

I would estimate there are some 9000 Russians in Norway right now. This amounts to one Russian per 500 Norwegians (much more in Northern Norway, less in rural areas of the rest of the country).

This plot was obtained by adding together the number of citizens of USSR, Russia (after 1991) and Ukraine who lived in Norway according to the statistics (numbers for January 1st of each year). Svalbard@ was not included.

If the curve above looks alarming to you, fear not. I think, what we see so far can be interpreted as restoring the normal equilibrium after cold war's iron curtain lifted. Other neighboring countries are represented in Norway more than Russia. There are no signs of saturation on the graph, though.

The growth of Russian population has been exponential since 1990. These days, every exponential law is obliged to bear somebody's name (the best known example of which is Moore's law). After digging all this data, I think I am in position to put my name on this exponential curve.

Notes: a) I would use statistics of immigrant population instead of foreign citizens statistics to derive the law, but there aren't easily available retrospective figures for the former. For Russians, however, immigrant population should experience the same growth, exceeding the foreign citizens numbers by about 15%. b) The Makarov's Law was formulated in early 2003.

Currently, Russian women outnumber Russian men in Norway 2.5 to 1, not lastly thanks to the activity of numerous marriage agencies@.
Some part of the total growth can be also attributed to the influx of asylum seekers@.

• Statistics of Russian-speaking population in Norway (PDF, 75KB) - article, based on data from 2003 (RB no.5, 2004).

Some info about the previous waves of Russian emigration can be found in this article:

• St. Nicholas parish, the first Russian Orthodox parish in Norway (PDF, 1.5MB) - history of the parish and Russian diaspora in Norway (RB no.4, 2003).