# Norway license plate: County letter

> The Norway county letter license plate: format L-999, for example O-339, 1913 to 1971, car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle, cited to Statens vegvesen.

Page: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/county-letter-1913 · Markdown version of the HTML page, which is canonical. Site map: https://vehiclesdb.com/llms.txt · Terms of use: https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/terms

Part of [Norway license plates](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway) (17 registration series).

![Norway license plate, County letter (1913 to 1971)](https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/no/no-county-letter-1913/norway-license-plate-county-letter.svg)

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | `L-999` (L is any letter, 9 any digit) |
| Years | 1913–1971 |
| Class | standard |
| Issued for | car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle |
| Plate size | 520 × 110 mm |
| Colours | background #FFFFFF; characters #000000 |
| Rear plate differs from the front | yes |
| Checking a registration | The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued. |
| Series id | `no-county-letter-1913` (https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/county-letter-1913) |

Sources:

- [§ 2-16: 'Kjennemerke for registreringsordning før 1. april 1971' — 'En bokstav og tre til seks tall', the half-height horizontal stroke, and legibility at 30 metres. PRIMARY, and the source of the 1971 end date.](https://lovdata.no/dokument/SF/forskrift/1990-01-25-92/KAPITTEL_2)
- [2026-07-16): the 1 April 1913 start (lov om motorvogner 21 June 1912 + kgl.res. 18 March 1913), the letter-to-county allocation, every design stage above, the colour variants, and the Oslo telefonnummer plates.](https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjennemerke_for_motorkj%C3%B8ret%C3%B8y_i_Norge)

## How numbers are issued

The letter is the county; the digits are a sequence the county governor (later the police) allocated among the police districts within it. The number followed the OWNER, so a vehicle sold into another county was re-plated. Digit width grew with motorisation: up to 3 digits in 1913, 5 in several districts after the First World War, 6 by the 1960s.

## Before and after

| Relation | Series | Years |
|---|---|---|
| It replaced | [Numeric 1899](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/numeric-1899) | 1899 to 1913 |
| Replaced by | [Standard 1971](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/standard-1971) | 1971 to 1982 |

## Other standard plates here

- [Standard 2002](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/standard-2002) (2002 to today)
- [Rally](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/rally-1996) (documented since 1996)
- [Green varebil](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/green-varebil-1990) (documented since 1990)
- [Off-road](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/offroad-1990) (documented since 1990)
- [Standard 1982](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/standard-1982) (1982 to 2002)
- [Standard 1971](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/standard-1971) (1971 to 1982)
- [Numeric 1899](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/norway/numeric-1899) (1899 to 1913)

## Use it

- Plate image (SVG): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/no/no-county-letter-1913.svg
- Make it with your own text: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plate-generator/norway?series=no-county-letter-1913
- API: `GET https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/no` returns this series as the entry with `"id": "no-county-letter-1913"` (https://vehiclesdb.com/api)

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Open data, CC BY 4.0: reuse it with a visible credit to VehiclesDB and a link (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/attribution). Plate images show sample serials and are not open data (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/image-license). Dataset commit db0ec0a: https://github.com/vehiclesdb/vehiclesdb