[7] Researchers at Technische Universität Berlin have claimed that Smøla is the island which Pytheas called Thule (Ancient Greek: Θούλη, Thoúlē).
The official blazon is "Gules, two seagulls volant argent" (Norwegian: I rødt to oppflygende sølv måker).
The charge has a tincture of argent which means it is commonly colored white, but if it is made out of metal, then silver is used.
This design was chosen to highlight the fact that this is an island community and that is a common type of bird in the area.
In 2019, archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research using large-scale high-resolution georadar technology, determined that a 17 meter long Viking ship was buried on the island of Edøya near one of the churches.
They estimate its age as over 1,000 years, from the Merovingian or Viking period; the group hopes to conduct additional searches in the area.
[12] The municipality of Smøla is located north of the town of Kristiansund, off the western coast of Norway.
The 216-square-kilometre (83 sq mi) main island is very flat, the highest peak reaches 64 m (210 ft) above sea level.
Scientists of the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformationtechnique of Technische Universität Berlin were testing the antique maps of Ptolemy and recognized a pattern of calculation mistakes that occurred when one tried to convert the old coordinates from Ptolemy into modern cartographical maps.
The total generating capacity is equivalent to 450 GWh of electricity per year, which corresponds to the average annual power consumption of 22,500 Norwegian households.