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Norway

Norway is a Nordic country on the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, located in Europe, and bordering Sweden, Finland and Russia. Norway has a very elongated shape; the country's extensive coastline along the North Atlantic Ocean is home to its famous fjords. more...

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The Kingdom of Norway also includes the Arctic island territories of Svalbard and Jan Mayen. The Norwegian sovereignty on Svalbard is based on the Svalbard Treaty, but this does not apply to Jan Mayen. Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic Ocean and a claim for Peter I Island in the South Pacific Ocean are also external dependencies, but these are not part of the Kingdom. Norway also claims Queen Maud Land in Antarctica where it has established the Troll permanent research station.

History

Archaeological finds indicate that there were people in Norway about 12,000 years ago. They probably came from more southern regions, that is northern Germany, and travelled further north along the Norwegian coastline.

In the 9th century, Norway consisted of a number of petty kingdoms. According to tradition, Harald Fairhair gathered the small kingdoms into one in 872 with the battle of Hafrsfjord. He became the first king of a united Norway.

The Viking age (8th to 11th centuries) was one of unification and expansion. The Norwegians established settlements on Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and parts of Britain and Ireland, and attempted to settle at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada (it is the Vinland of the Saga of Eric the Red). Norwegians founded the modern-day Irish cities of Limerick and Waterford and established trading communities near the Celtic settlements of Cork and Dublin which later became Ireland's two most important cities. The spread of Christianity in Norway in this period is in large part attributed to the missionary kings Olav Trygvason (995-1000) and Saint Olav (1015-1028), although Haakon the Good was Norway's first Christian king and the norse tradition was replaced slowly over two centuries (9th and 10th centuries).

In 1349, the Black Death wiped out between 40% and 50% of the Norwegian population, causing a decline in both society and economics. During this decline, the Fairhair dynasty died out in 1387. Royal politics at the time resulted in several personal unions between the Nordic countries, eventually bringing the thrones of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden under the control of Queen Margrethe when the country entered into the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Sweden. Sweden declared its independence in 1523, but Norway remained under the Danish crown until 1814. During the national romanticism of the 19th century, this period has sometimes been referred to as the "400-Year Night", since all of the kingdom's royal, intellectual, and administrative power was centred in Copenhagen, Denmark. However, it must be said that the common people of Norway had more freedom than the Danish people because the rural communities of Norway were organised differently than those of Denmark. Other factors also contributed to Norway's decline in this period. With the introduction of Protestantism in 1537, Norway lost the steady stream of pilgrims to the relics of St. Olav at the Nidaros shrine, and with them, much of the contact with cultural and economic life in the rest of Europe. Additionally, Norway saw its land area decrease in the 17th century with the loss of the provinces Bohuslän, Jemtland, and Herjedalen to Sweden, as a result of the wars between Denmark-Norway and Sweden.