Norwegian Elkhound
Norwegian Elkhounds have a cited life expectancy of 12.9 years (McMillan 2024 / VetCompass, n=145, 95% CI 12.4 to 14.1). The most carried tested variant is Chondrodysplasia, Disproportionate Short-limbed, in 5.4% of 166 Norwegian Elkhounds tested (Donner 2023). Only 10 dogs stand behind the atlas figures here, so little is known yet.
Also known as Gra Norsk Elghund, Gray Norwegian Elkhound, Harmaa norjanhirvikoira, and Norsk Elghund.
What genetic diseases do Norwegian Elkhounds carry?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), Norwegian Elkhounds carry 3 of them at observable frequency. Carrier frequency is not clinical risk. Most recessive variants require two copies for disease expression; many dominant variants show incomplete penetrance. Read this as a population fingerprint of what's in the gene pool, not a per-dog prediction.
ABCB1what this gene does
ABCB1 is a gene that helps control how certain drugs are processed and cleared from a dog's body.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed that carries this gene variant, ask your vet about medication sensitivities before giving any new drugs.
PRCDwhat this gene does
PRCD is a gene involved in the health of a dog's retina, the part of the eye that detects light and helps with vision.
For your dog: If your dog belongs to a breed known to carry PRCD changes, it's worth discussing eye health and potential genetic testing with your vet.
Other names
The Norwegian Elkhound is also recorded as Gra Norsk Elghund, Gray Norwegian Elkhound, Harmaa norjanhirvikoira, Norsk Elghund, Norwegian Moose Dog, and Small Grey Elk Dog.
Identified as Norwegian Elkhound (VBO:0200955) in the Vertebrate Breed Ontology (Mullen et al. 2025, CC-BY 4.0) · registry IDs iDog 170 · VeNom 13994.
For researchers Population genetics, disease models and every recorded condition Open the research detail for the Norwegian Elkhound
In the atlas, the Norwegian Elkhound clusters consistently as Norwegian Elkhound (100% of the 10 dogs here).
Low breed predictability score (0.25), individual dogs of this breed vary widely in genetics, suggesting active substructure or sub-population diversity. Only 10 dogs of this breed in the atlas, modestly sampled.
What the atlas genotypes say about Norwegian Elkhound
Computed from the 14,478 CanVAS dogs in the Atlas, on an imputed genotype backbone: 77,215 directly typed sites per dog, imputed to 9.67 million variants.
The confidence below counts dogs, not reads: it is the size of the sample, and it is separate from how the genotypes were measured.
Not enough dogs in the atlas yet (n=10) for a reliable diversity figure. It fills in as more are added.
What does genetic diversity mean?
How varied a breed's gene pool is — the share of gene spots where a typical dog of the breed carries two different versions rather than two identical ones.
How to read it: Higher = more diverse. Among well-sampled breeds it ranges roughly 0.22 (least diverse) to 0.33 (most diverse).
Diversity is a strength, not a verdict on any individual dog. Lower diversity means it's worth paying attention to recessive-risk testing — not that a dog is doomed.
Not enough dogs in the atlas yet (n=10) to resolve cluster structure. It fills in as more are added.
What does within-breed variation mean?
How much individual dogs within the breed differ from each other genetically.
How to read it: Higher = more internal variety among individuals of the breed.
Sensitive to how many dogs of the breed we've sampled.
What does typical lifespan mean?
The median age dogs of the breed tend to reach.
How to read it: Higher = longer-lived. Compare to longevity-for-size to see whether it's just a size effect.
Drawn from population lifespan records; individual dogs vary widely with care, genetics, and luck.
Norwegian Elkhounds are a natural model for human disease
Because the same genes cause the same conditions across species, the inherited conditions documented in Norwegian Elkhounds help researchers understand, and work toward treating, the human diseases they model. This is the dog advancing human medicine. The breed models the human disease; it does not have it, and this is not a prediction for your dog.
- OMIM:616756, modeled by the breed's Ataxia, HACE1-related , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:604042, modeled by the breed's Chondrodysplasia, disproportionate short-limbed, ITGA10-related' , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:615836, modeled by the breed's Early retinal degeneration , the same underlying biology.
- glycogen storage disease due to GLUT2 deficiency, modeled by the breed's Fanconi syndrome , the same underlying biology.
- Weill-Marchesani syndrome 1, modeled by the breed's Glaucoma, primary open angle, ADAMTS10-related , the same underlying biology.
- retinitis pigmentosa 36, modeled by the breed's Progressive rod-cone degeneration, PRCD-related , the same underlying biology.
Every condition recorded in the Norwegian Elkhound
Beyond the testable carriers above, OMIA's literature catalogue records 9 genetic conditions in the Norwegian Elkhound, 7 of which have a known human equivalent. This is the documented landscape across all Norwegian Elkhounds ever studied, not a prediction for any one dog.
- Ataxia, HACE1-related Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: OMIM:616756
- Chondrodysplasia, disproportionate short-limbed, ITGA10-related' Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: OMIM:604042
- Early retinal degeneration Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: OMIM:615836
- Human equivalent: glycogen storage disease due to GLUT2 deficiency
- Glaucoma, primary open angle, ADAMTS10-related Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: Weill-Marchesani syndrome 1
- Progressive rod-cone degeneration, PRCD-related Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: retinitis pigmentosa 36
- XX difference of sexual development, generic MultifactorialHuman equivalent: 46,XX disorder of sex development
- Rod dysplasia Autosomal recessive
- Transitional lumbosacral vertebrae Multifactorial
Where every number on this page came from.
This page draws on three primary data sources. Carrier frequencies for the Mendelian section come from Donner et al. 2023 (CC-BY-4.0). We grade these data at evidence Limited because the cohort is a direct-to-consumer ascertainment, which biases toward owners who chose to test their dogs. The panel also uses tag-SNP proxies for some variants rather than direct causal-variant assays. Limited is a study-design grade, not a quality grade: the Donner cohort is the largest open canine-genotype dataset in existence and we are grateful for it. We rate the confounding MEDIUM.
Population-genetic dimensions (heterozygosity, intra-breed PCA distance, nearest neighbors, trait-locus frequencies) come from CanVAS (Brundage 2026), harmonized through the Sniff Atlas. The exact release date and verification commit are pinned at the bottom of the page so a researcher can trace a number back to a specific snapshot. The disease-gene-variant graph comes from OMIA (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals; Nicholas, Tammen, and the Sydney Informatics Hub at the Sydney School of Veterinary Science, The University of Sydney; retrieved April 2026, DOI 10.25910/2AMR-PV70).
What this page does not yet have. Inheritance modes and per-disease penetrance evidence from Donner 2023 are in the structured data for every variant the panel covers. Mondo, OMIM, Ensembl, and HGNC cross-references live on the gene and disease pages this page links to, rather than being repeated here. What is still absent from this breed page is anything not in the cited panel, and each such gap carries its cause where it appears.
How to cite this page. The computed dimensions on this page are derived from the open Sniff Atlas v1.0.1 (Gehring 2026, doi:10.5281/zenodo.20566358, CC-BY 4.0). Full citation formats including BibTeX, RIS, and CITATION.cff at sniff.world/cite.
Some things about living with a norwegian elkhound never make it into a database. Add what you know as a Keeper, in your words →
Lived experience, kept beside the science.We have 10 norwegian elkhounds. We do not have yours.
Every norwegian elkhound added sharpens the breed's genetic neighborhood. Enrollment is free. The data stays open. The star is permanent.
- Donner J, Freyer J, Davison S, Anderson H, Blades M, Honkanen L, et al. (2023). Genetic prevalence and clinical relevance of canine Mendelian disease variants in over one million dogs. PLOS Genetics 19(2):e1010651. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1010651
- Brundage DM (2026). CanVAS: A Harmonized and Imputed Canine Variant Atlas. bioRxiv. doi:10.64898/2026.04.13.718238
- Nicholas, F.W., Tammen, I., & Sydney Informatics Hub. (2026). Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals (OMIA) [dataset]. The University of Sydney. https://omia.org. doi:10.25910/2AMR-PV70 (retrieved April 2026).