Kingdom of Norway Kongeriket Norge (Bokmål) Kongeriket Noreg (Nynorsk)
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: Royal: Alt for Norge ("Everything for Norway") 1814 Eidsvoll oath: Enig og tro til Dovre faller ("United and loyal until the mountains of Dovre crumble")
Anthem: Ja, vi elsker dette landet (de facto) ("Yes, we love this country") Royal anthem: Kongesangen ("The King's Song")
Location of  Norway  (dark green) [Legend]
Capital (and largest city)		Oslo 59°56′N 10°41′E / 59.933°N 10.683°E / 59.933; 10.683
Official language(s)		Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk)
Recognised regional languages		Northern Sami, Lule Sami, Kven and Southern Sami
Ethnic groups		86.2% Norwegians[1] 2% Sami[2] 11.8% other[1]
Demonym		Norwegian
Government		Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
-	King	King Harald V
-	Prime Minister	Jens Stoltenberg (AP)
-	President of the Storting	Dag Terje Andersen (AP)
-	Chief Justice	Tore Schei
-	Current coalition	Red-Green Coalition
Legislature		Storting
Establishment
-	Unification	872
-	Constitution	17 May 1814
-	Dissolution of union with Sweden	7 June 1905
-	Restoration from German occupation	8 May 1945
Area
-	Total	385,252 km2 (61st1) 148,746 sq mi
-	Water (%)	7.03
Population
-	2012 census	5 009 150[3]
-	Density	15.5/km2 (213th) 35/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$265.911 billion[4]
-	Per capita	$53,470[4]
GDP (nominal)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$483.650 billion[4]
-	Per capita	$97,254[4]
Gini (2000)		25.8 (low) (5th)
HDI (2011)		0.943[5] (very high) (1st)
Currency		Norwegian krone (NOK)
Time zone		CET (UTC+1)
-	Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Date formats		dd.mm.yyyy
Drives on the		right
ISO 3166 code		NO
Internet TLD		.no2
Calling code		47
1	Includes Svalbard and Jan Mayen. (Without these two areas, the area of Norway is 323,802 km2, placing it 67th in the world.[6])
2	Two more TLDs have been assigned, but to date not used: .sj for Svalbard and Jan Mayen; .bv for Bouvet Island.
3	This percentage is for the mainland and also includes glaciers[7]

Norway ⁱ/ˈnɔrweɪ/ (Norwegian:  Norge (Bokmål) or  Noreg (Nynorsk)), officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and the subantarctic Bouvet Island.^{[note 1]} Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres (148,747 sq mi) and a population of about 5 million.^[9] It is the second least densely populated country in Europe. The majority of the country shares a border to the east with Sweden; its northernmost region is bordered by Finland to the south and Russia to the east; in its south Norway borders the Skagerrak Strait across from Denmark. The capital city of Norway is Oslo. Norway's extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea, is home to its famous fjords.

Two centuries of Viking raids tapered off following the adoption of Christianity by King Olav Tryggvason in 994. A period of civil war ended in the 13th century when Norway expanded its control overseas to parts of the British Isles, Iceland, and Greenland. Norwegian territorial power peaked in 1265, but competition from the Hanseatic League and the spread of the Black Death weakened the country. In 1380, Norway was absorbed into a union with Denmark that lasted more than four centuries. In 1814, Norwegians resisted the cession of their country to Sweden and adopted a new constitution. Sweden then invaded Norway but agreed to let Norway keep its constitution in return for accepting the union under a Swedish king. Rising nationalism throughout the 19th century led to a 1905 referendum granting Norway independence. Although Norway remained neutral in World War I, it suffered heavy losses to its shipping. Norway proclaimed its neutrality at the outset of World War II, but was nonetheless occupied for five years by the Third Reich. In 1949, neutrality was abandoned and Norway became a founding member of NATO. Discovery of oil and gas in adjacent waters in the late 1960s boosted Norway's economic fortunes. In referenda held in 1972 and 1994, Norway rejected joining the EU. Key domestic issues include immigration and integration of ethnic minorities, maintaining the country's extensive social safety net with an aging population, and preserving economic competitiveness.^[2][10]

Norway is a unitary parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with King Harald V as its head of state and Jens Stoltenberg as its prime minister. It is a unitary state with administrative subdivisions on two levels known as counties (fylke) and municipalities (kommuner). The Sámi people have a certain amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament and the Finnmark Act. Although having rejected European Union membership in two referenda, Norway maintains close ties with the union and its member countries, as well as with the United States. Norway remains one of the biggest financial contributors to the United Nations,^[11] and participates with UN forces in international missions, notably in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Sudan and Libya. Norway is a founding member of the United Nations, NATO, the Council of Europe, and the Nordic Council; a member of the European Economic Area, the WTO, and the OECD; and is also a part of Schengen Area.

Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, fresh water, and hydropower. The country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world. On a per-capita basis, it is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas outside the Middle East,^[12][13] and the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's gross domestic product.^[14] The country maintains a Nordic welfare model with universal health care, subsidized higher education, and a comprehensive social security system. From 2001 to 2006,^[15] and then again from 2009 through 2011, Norway has had the highest human development index ranking in the world.^[16][17] In 2011, Norway also ranked the highest on the Democracy Index.^[18]

Etymology[link]

Modern etymologists believe the country's name means "the northward route" (the "way north" or the "north way"), which in Old Norse would have been nor veg or *norð vegr. The Old Norse name for Norway was Nóregr, the Anglo-Saxon Norþ weg and mediaeval Latin Northvegia. The present name of the Kingdom of Norway in Bokmål is "Kongeriket Norge" and in Nynorsk "Kongeriket Noreg", both only a couple of letters removed from the original "northern way": Nor(d)-(v)e.g.

History[link]

Prehistory[link]

Approximate extent of the Corded Ware culture.

Nordic Bronze Age rock carvings at Steinkjer, Central Norway

The first inhabitants were the Ahrensburg culture (11th to 10th millennia BC) which was a late Upper Paleolithic culture during the Younger Dryas, the last spell of cold at the end of the Weichsel glaciation. The culture is named after village of Ahrensburg, 25 km (15.53 mi) northeast of Hamburg in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein where wooden arrow shafts and clubs have been excavated.^[19] The earliest traces of human occupation in Norway are found along the coast, where the huge ice shelf of the last ice age first melted between 11,000 and 8,000 BC. The oldest finds are stone tools dating from 9,500 to 6,000 BC, discovered in Finnmark (Komsa culture) in the north and Rogaland (Fosna culture) in the southwest. However, theories about two altogether different cultures (the Komsa culture north of the Arctic Circle being one and the Fosna culture from Trøndelag to Oslo Fjord being the other) were rendered obsolete in the 1970s. More recent finds along the entire coast revealed to archaeologists that the difference between the two can simply be ascribed to different types of tools and not to different cultures. Coastal fauna provided a means of livelihood for fishermen and hunters, who may have made their way along the southern coast about 10,000 BC when the interior was still covered with ice. It is now thought that these so-called “Arctic” peoples came from the south and followed the coast northward considerably later. Some may have come along the ice-free coast of the Kola Peninsula, but the evidence of this is still poor.

In the southern part of the country are dwelling sites dating from about 5,000 BC. Finds from these sites give a clearer idea of the life of the hunting and fishing peoples. The implements vary in shape and mostly are made of different kinds of stone; those of later periods are more skillfully made. Rock carvings (i. e. petroglyphs) have been found, usually near hunting and fishing grounds. They represent game such as deer, reindeer, elk, bears, birds, seals, whales, and fish (especially salmon and halibut), all of which were vital to the way of life of the coastal peoples. The carvings at Alta in Finnmark, the largest in Scandinavia, were made at sea level continuously from 4,200 to 500 BC and mark the progression of the land as it rose from the sea after the last ice age (Rock carvings at Alta).

Bronze Age[link]

Sæbø sword from Sæbø, Hordaland (800 AD)

Between 3000 and 2500 BC new settlers (Corded Ware culture) arrived in eastern Norway. They were Indo-European farmers who grew grain and kept cows and sheep. The hunting-fishing population of the west coast was also gradually replaced by farmers, though hunting and fishing remained useful secondary means of livelihood.

From about 1500 BC bronze was gradually introduced, but the use of stone implements continued; Norway had few riches to barter for bronze goods, and the few finds consist mostly of elaborate weapons and brooches that only chieftains could afford. Huge burial cairns built close to the sea as far north as Harstad and also inland in the south are characteristic of this period. The motifs of the rock carvings differ from those typical of the Stone Age. Representations of the Sun, animals, trees, weapons, ships, and people are all strongly stylized, probably as fertility symbols connected with the religious ideas of the period.

Iron Age[link]

Little has been found dating from the early Iron Age (the last 500 years BC). The dead were cremated, and their graves contain few burial goods. During the first four centuries AD the people of Norway were in contact with Roman-occupied Gaul. About 70 Roman bronze cauldrons, often used as burial urns, have been found. Contact with the civilized countries farther south brought a knowledge of runes; the oldest known Norwegian runic inscription dates from the 3rd century. At this time the amount of settled area in the country increased, a development that can be traced by coordinated studies of topography, archaeology, and place-names. The oldest root names, such as nes, vik, and bø (“cape,” “bay,” and “farm”), are of great antiquity, dating perhaps from the Bronze Age, whereas the earliest of the groups of compound names with the suffixes vin (“meadow”) or heim (“settlement”), as in Bjorgvin (Bergen) or Saeheim (Seim), usually date from the 1st century AD.

Migration Age[link]

The destruction of the Western Roman Empire by the Germanic tribes (5th century) is characterized by rich finds, including chieftains’ graves containing magnificent weapons and gold objects. Hill forts were built on precipitous rocks for defense. Excavation has revealed stone foundations of farmhouses 60 to 90 feet (18 to 27 metres) long—one even 150 feet (46 metres) long—the roofs of which were supported on wooden posts. These houses were family homesteads where several generations lived together, with people and cattle under one roof. From this period and later (600–800), nascent communities can be traced. Defense works require cooperation and leadership, so petty states of some kind with a defense and administrative organization must have existed.

These states were based on either clans or tribes (e.g., the Horder of Hordaland in western Norway). By the 9th century each of these small states had things, or tings (local or regional assemblies), for negotiating and settling disputes. The thing meeting places, each eventually with a horg (open-air sanctuary) or a hov (temple; literally “hill”), were usually situated on the oldest and best farms, which belonged to the chieftains and wealthiest farmers. The regional things united to form even larger units: assemblies of deputy yeomen from several regions. In this way, the lagting (assemblies for negotiations and lawmaking) developed. The Gulating had its meeting place by Sognefjord and may have been the centre of an aristocratic confederation along the western fjords and islands called the Gulatingslag. The Frostating was the assembly for the leaders in the Trondheimsfjord area; the earls Jarls of Lade, near Trondheim, seem to have enlarged the Frostatingslag by adding the coastland from Romsdalsfjord to the Lofoten Islands. A lagting developed in the area of Lake Mjøsa in the east and eventually established its meeting place at Eidsvoll, becoming known as the Eidsivating. The area around Oslofjord, although at times closely tied to Denmark, developed a lagting—with its meeting place at Sarpsborg called the Borgarting.

Viking Age[link]

The helmet found at Gjermundbu near Haugsbygd, Buskerud, is the only Viking Age helmet that has been found.