Norway has adopted a new name for Belarus to be used in official documents, Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt announced on Sunday. The country will now be called Belarus instead of Hviterussland, a historic Norwegian name for the region literally meaning “White Russia.”
“From today on, the International Day of Solidarity with Belarus, we no longer use the name Hviterussland in the Norwegian language,” Huitfeldt announced on Twitter.
The decision was made during a visit by Belarusian opposition figure Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claims to have won the country’s 2020 presidential election. She finished runner-up in the election that triggered mass protests and was not recognized in the West amid claims that the polls were neither free nor fair.