The village is an old Norwegian trading centre since the 1600s. Talvik Church is located in the village. The village of Talvik was the administrative centre of the old municipality of Talvik from 1863 until 1964 when it was merged into Alta municipality.[4]
Name
The village is named after the old Talvik farm since the first Talvik Church was built there. The first element of the name is rather uncertain. If the first element was of Old Norse origin then it is derived from the word Þelli which means "pine" (due to the large number of pine trees in the area). The other explanation is that it is a corruption of the Northern Sami word Dálbme or the longer name Dálbmeluokta (historic spelling) which translates as "fog" or "fog bay". The early Norwegian settlers would have translated that as tåkebukta (meaning "fog bay") and this could have been corrupted from tåke to tal. The last element of the name is vík which means "inlet" or "cove". Historically, the name was spelled Talvig using the old Danish spelling, and later it was "Norwegianized" to Talvik.[4][5]
