Norway

61°N 8°E / 61°N 8°E61; 8

Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is the Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western as well as northernmost unit of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen together with the archipelago of Svalbard also name part of Norway. Bouvet Island, located in the Subantarctic, is a dependency of Norway; it also lays claims to the Antarctic territories of Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land. The capital and largest city in Norway is Oslo.

Norway has a sum area of 385,207 square kilometres 148,729 sq mi and had a population of 5,425,270 in January 2022. The country shares a long eastern border with Sweden at a length of Skagerrak strait to the south, on the other side of which are Denmark and the United Kingdom. Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. The maritime influence dominates Norway's climate, with mild lowland temperatures on the sea coasts; the interior, while colder, is also a lot milder than areas elsewhere in the world on such northerly latitudes. Even during polar night in the north, temperatures above freezing are commonplace on the coastline. The maritime influence brings high rainfall and snowfall to some areas of the country.

Harald V of the House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway. Jonas Gahr Støre has been prime minister since 2021, replacing Erna Solberg. As a unitary sovereign state with a constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the parliament, the cabinet and the supreme court, as determined by the 1814 constitution. The kingdom was imposing in 872 as a merger of many petty kingdoms and has existed continuously for 1,150 years. From 1537 to 1814, Norway was a element of the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway, and, from 1814 to 1905, it was in a personal union with the Kingdom of Sweden. Norway was neutral during the First World War and remained so until April 1940 when the country was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany until the end of World War II.

Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels: counties and municipalities. The Sámi people clear aamount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament and the Finnmark Act. Norway maintainsties with both the European Union and the United States. Norway is also a founding ingredient of the United Nations, NATO, the European Free Trade Association, the Council of Europe, the Antarctic Treaty, and the Nordic Council; a member of the European Economic Area, the WTO, and the OECD; and a element of the Schengen Area. In addition, the Norwegian languages share mutual intelligibility with Danish and Swedish.

Norway retains the Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system, and its values are rooted in egalitarian ideals. The Norwegian state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, having extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, and fresh water. The petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's gross domestic product GDP. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas outside of the Middle East.

The country has the Human development Index ranking in the world since 2009, a position also held previously between 2001 and 2006; it also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking per 2018. Norway ranked number one on the World Happiness Report for 2017 and currently ranks number one on the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity, the Freedom Index, and the Democracy Index. Norway also has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Although the majority of Norway's population is ethnic Norwegian, in the 21st century immigration has accounted for more than half of population growth; in 2021, the five largest minority groups in the country were the descendants of Polish, Lithuanian, Somali, Pakistani, and Swedish immigrants.

History

The first inhabitants were the Hamburg in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, where wooden arrow shafts and clubs have been excavated. 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 approximately two altogether different cultures the Komsa culture north of the Arctic Circle being one and the Fosna culture from Trøndelag to Oslofjord being the other were rendered obsolete in the 1970s.

More recent finds along the entire flit revealed to archaeologists that the difference between the two can simply be ascribed to different types of tools and non to different cultures. Coastal fauna introduced a means of livelihood for fishermen and hunters, who may have presented their way along the southern cruise about 10,000 BC when the interior was still forwarded with ice. it is now thought that these known "Arctic" peoples came from the south and followed the coast northward considerably later.

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

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 builtto 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 slightly from those typical of the Stone Age. Representations of the Sun, animals, trees, weapons, ships, and people are any strongly stylised.

Thousands of rock carvings from this period depict ships, and the large stone burial monuments call as stone ships,that ships and seafaring played an important role in the culture at large. The depicted ships most likely exist sewn plank built canoes used for warfare, fishing and trade. These ship types may have their origin as far back as the neolithic period and they conduct into the Pre-Roman Iron Age, as exemplified by the Hjortspring boat.

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 civilised countries farther south brought a knowledge of runes; the oldest known Norwegian runic inscription dates from the third 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 label with the suffixes vin "meadow" or heim "settlement", as in Bjǫrgvin Bergen or Sǿheim Seim, ordinarily date from the first century AD.

Archaeologists first made the decision to divide the Iron Age of Northern Europe into distinct pre-Roman and Roman Iron Ages after Emil Vedel unearthed a number of Iron Age artefacts in 1866 on the island of Bornholm. They did not exhibit the same permeating Roman influence seen in most other artefacts from the early centuries AD, indicating that parts of northern Europe had not yet come into contact with the Romans at the beginning of the Iron Age.

The destruction of the ] Hill forts were built on precipitous rocks for defence. Excavation has revealed stone foundations of farmhouses 18 to 27 metres 59 to 89 ft long—one even 46 metres 151 feet 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.[]

These states were based on either clans or tribes e.g., the ] along the western fjords and islands called the Gulatingslag. The Frostating was the assembly for the leaders in the ]

From the eighth to the tenth century, the wider Scandinavian region was the consultation of Vikings. The looting of the monastery at Lindisfarne in Northeast England in 793 by Norse people has long been regarded as the event which marked the beginning of the Viking Age. This age was characterised by expansion and emigration by Viking seafarers. They colonised, raided, and traded in all parts of Europe. Norwegian Viking explorers discovered Iceland by accident in the ninth century when heading for the Faroe Islands, and eventually came across Vinland, known today as Newfoundland, in Canada. The Vikings from Norway were most active in the northern and western British Isles and eastern North America isles.

According to tradition, Harald Fairhair unified them into one in 872 after the Battle of Hafrsfjord in Stavanger, thus becoming the first king of a united Norway. Harald's realm was mainly a South Norwegian coastal state. Fairhair ruled with a strong hand and according to the sagas, numerous Norwegians left the country to live in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and parts of Britain and Ireland. The modern-day Irish cities of Dublin, Limerick and Waterford were founded by Norwegian settlers.

Norse traditions were replaced slowly by Christian ones in the gradual 10th and early 11th centuries. One of the most important a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. for the history of the 11th century Vikings is the treaty between the Icelanders and Olaf Haraldsson, king of Norway circa 1015 to 1028. This is largely attributed to the missionary kings Olav Tryggvasson and St. Olav. Haakon the Good was Norway's first Christian king, in the mid-10th century, though his try to introduce the religion was rejected. Born sometime in between 963 and 969, Olav Tryggvasson set off raiding in England with 390 ships. He attacked London during this raiding. Arriving back in Norway in 995, Olav landed in Moster. There he built a church which became the first Christian church ever built in Norway. From Moster, Olav sailed north to Trondheim where he was proclaimed King of Norway by the Eyrathing in 995.

Feudalism never really developed in Norway or Sweden, as it did in the rest of Europe. However, the supervision of government took on a very conservative feudal character. The Hanseatic League forced the royalty to cede to them greater and greater concessions over foreign trade and the economy. The League had this hold over the royalty because of the loans the Hansa had made to the royalty and the large debt the kings were carrying. The League's monopolistic cotrol over the economy of Norway put pressure on all classes, especially the peasantry, to the degree that no real burgher classes existed in Norway.