Roughly 100 kilometres southeast of Edmonton and about 22 kilometres southwest of Camrose, the small community of New Norway sits along Highway 21 in central Alberta. It falls within the boundaries of Camrose County, which provides fire protection and municipal services to the hamlet. With a land area of just 1.13 square kilometres, the community recorded a population of 307 residents in the 2021 federal census, spread across 129 occupied private dwellings out of 138 total. That figure represented a modest decline of about 4.1 percent from the 320 people counted in 2016, which itself had been a notable jump of 15.1 percent above the 2011 count of 278. Population density in 2021 sat at approximately 271.7 people per square kilometre.
The name New Norway traces back to around 1895, reflecting the Norwegian families who settled the area after the Ole M. Olstad family arrived in 1892, travelling by the Canadian Pacific Railway to Wetaskiwin before making their way to the nearby Duhamel settlement. The Olstads filed homesteads under the Dominion Lands Act and purchased additional CPR land at three dollars per acre. For a time the district carried the name Olstead District before the influx of Norwegian and other settlers prompted the change. By 1903, a school, general store, and blacksmith shop had taken root. In the autumn of 1909, anticipating the arrival of the Grand Trunk Pacific rail line, the entire community was physically relocated to its present site using skids and seven oxen. The townsite went on sale October 14, 1909, with commercial lots priced between one hundred and two hundred and fifty dollars, and residential lots between fifty and one hundred and fifty dollars. New Norway incorporated as a village on May 6, 1910, holding its first council election three days later with Norman M. Smith, James F. Willows, and Evan O. Olstad serving. More than a century after incorporation, the village was dissolved to hamlet status under Camrose County effective November 1, 2012. Today the hamlet supports a number of small businesses along with an elementary and secondary school.