Via Views and News from Norway:
(...)
Many Norwegian communities far from Oslo see these new settlers as their hope for the future of regions otherwise threatened by depopulation.
Newspaper Aftenposten reported over the weekend that fully 118 municipalities in Norway would have registered population declines last year if it weren’t for the immigrants moving in. Just as Norwegian and other European immigrants helped populate desolate areas of the US Midwest and prairie in the 1800s, asylum seekers and immigrants are playing an important role in Norway’s “district politics” of today.(source)
