Norway's capital is rapidly expanding, though only one in ten of Oslo's new residents in the past ten years is an ethnic Norwegian

Jonathan Tisdall:

Politicians boasts that the city is a great place to live and have children, but new calculations carried out for Aftenposten's evening edition show that Oslo's growth is almost exclusively due to its immigrant population.

Immigrants account for 92.5 percent of the capital's total population growth over the past ten years. Immigrants from western nations make up seven percent, while non-western immigrants are nearly 86 percent of the growth.

"That number is surprisingly high," admits the man behind the calculations, City of Oslo special adviser Geir Thornsnæs. He reckons that most of the immigrant growth is due to relocation, both from abroad and from other areas of Norway.

"Immigrant women have more children than Norwegians. But because Norwegian women are the great majority, the birth figures are not striking," Thorsnæs said, and notes that Poles and Somalians were the groups that increased the most last year. "A result of the expansion of the European Union and war," he said.

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