Norway

Summary

Norway has refused the bow every time it was asked, and the answer has always cited the same line: the act of 1981 allowed game to be killed at hunting only with firearms carrying a powder charge. That line is gone since 1 July 2026. The new Wildlife Resources Act says only that hunting may use firearms, weapon parts and ammunition suited to killing game safely and with regard to animal welfare, and leaves the list to the government. The list has not changed: the hunting regulation, kept in force under the new act and amended the week before it started, still allows at ordinary hunting only rifles and shotguns with a powder charge. Using anything else is an offence.

The change of wording set off a fight, and the record of it is useful. The agriculture minister told the press the bow would stay banned; the parliamentary committee’s Labour members said the same, a minority wanted any new weapon decided by law rather than regulation, and the Progress Party alone argued for the bow. The bowhunters’ federation reads the same text as a door: the requirement can now be lifted by regulation, without parliament.

The legal mechanism

• Wildlife Resources Act, § 24: at hunting only firearms, weapon parts and ammunition suited to killing the game safely and in a manner acceptable for animal welfare may be used; the King may prescribe by regulation which firearms, parts and ammunition are permitted. § 60 punishes a breach of § 24 or of a regulation issued under it with a fine or up to one year in prison. § 61 keeps the regulations issued under the old act in force.
• Hunting regulation, § 15: at ordinary hunting and culling only rifles and shotguns with a powder charge may be used; pistols, revolvers, military-type semi-automatics and automatic weapons are excluded, and moose, red deer, fallow deer, wild reindeer, mouflon, musk ox, bear and wolf take the rifle only. The paragraph was last amended in 2006; the amendment of 26 June 2026 that adapted the regulation to the new act left it as it was. The bow and the crossbow are named nowhere, and under § 15 they need not be.
• Wildlife Act of 1981, § 20, repealed 1 July 2026: at hunting, game could be killed only with firearms with a powder charge. This was the provision quoted in every refusal.
• History: applications for a trial were made in 1998, in 2011 by the bowhunters’ federation together with the farmers’, forest owners’ and hunters’ organisations, and again in the application of 2020 for five years. The environment ministry refused in 2012 and 2014 for want of scientific documentation of animal welfare; a proposed animal experiment on 38 deer was rejected by the animal-research committee in 2013, and a further attempt through a research institute by the food safety authority in 2018. The ethics council, in 2011, asked for reliable documentation of wounding rates and time to unconsciousness before any permission, from independent hands; the NOAH chronology lists these steps.
• The 2025 act: the government’s bill offered the powder wording or a technology-neutral one and chose the latter, for consistency with the weapons act. The minister’s statement of May 2025 was that bow and arrow remain prohibited at hunting, with the details left to regulation; the committee report records the Labour members’ view that bowhunting is to stay prohibited, the minority’s wish to keep such decisions in the law, and the Progress Party’s support for the bow. The hunters’ federation notes that the neutral wording does not open bowhunting and that any proposal would go through consultation first; the bowhunters’ federation says its next task is to show that the bow meets the act’s standard.

Before you go

This page describes the Norwegian texts as they stood on the date below. A change would now be a regulation of the ministry, published on Lovdata as an amendment to the hunting regulation’s § 15, after a public consultation; if you hear that the bow has been allowed, ask for that amendment and its date. Until then, hunting with a bow in Norway is an offence under § 60 of the act. The final check is yours.