Historically, the parish of Vikebygd was a part of the old municipality of Fjeldberg. In 1865, Vikebygd parish became a part of the new municipality of Sveen. On 1 January 1902, the eastern part of the municipality of Sveen was separated to form the new municipality of Vikebygd. Initially, Vikebygd had a population of 1,092.[3]
During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1964, the municipality of Vikebygd was dissolved. Using Ålfjorden as a dividing line the western part of Vikebygd (population: 471) was merged into the neighboring municipality of Sveio and the eastern part (population: 578) was merged into the neighboring municipality of Ølen. On 1 January 2006, all of Ølen municipality was incorporated into Vindafjord municipality in Rogaland county.[3]
Name
The municipality (originally the parish) is named after the old Vik farm (Old Norse: Víkr). The first element is the plural genitive casevík which means "bay" or "cove". The last element was added as a suffix. It comes from the word byggð which means "settlement" or "inhabited area".[4]
The municipal council(Heradsstyre) of Vikebygd was made up of 17 representatives who were elected to four year terms. The party breakdown of the final municipal council was as follows: