Sandefjord is a city and municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Sandefjord. The municipality of Sandefjord was established on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). The rural municipality of Sandar was merged into the municipality of Sandefjord on 1 January 1968.
The name originally belonged to the fjord (now called the Sandefjordsfjord). The first element is the genitive case of the name of the parish and former municipality of Sandar.The coat-of-arms is from modern times. They were granted on 9 May 1914. The Viking ship symbolizes the famous Gokstad ship, that was found near Sandefjord in 1880, one of the best preserved Vikings ships known. The whale symbolizes the fact that in the late 19th and early 20th century, Sandefjord was a main home port for whalers operating in the southern oceans
