Norway is a country in northern Europe occupying the western and northern reaches of the Scandinavian Peninsula, a land of deep fjords, soaring mountains, and a vast, ragged coastline stretching far into the Arctic. The homeland of the Vikings, it is today one of the wealthiest and most contented nations on Earth, its prosperity built on the sea, on hydropower, and on the oil and gas beneath its continental shelf.
Norway entered history in the Viking Age, from roughly the eighth to the eleventh centuries, when Norse seafarers from its coasts raided, traded, and explored across Europe and the North Atlantic, reaching Iceland, Greenland, and even North America long before Columbus. United into a single kingdom and converted to Christianity, Norway later spent centuries in unions with Denmark and then Sweden, before peacefully gaining full independence in 1905 and choosing its own king.
Norway's landscape is among the most dramatic in Europe, carved by ancient glaciers into deep fjords that cut far inland between steep mountains. Its long coastline, fringed by thousands of islands, stretches above the Arctic Circle, where in summer the midnight sun never sets and in winter the polar night brings the northern lights. Most of the country is rugged highland, leaving little flat land, so settlements cling to the valleys and the water's edge.
The flag of Norway is red, bearing a blue Nordic cross outlined in white, its arms reaching to the edges in the pattern shared across Scandinavia. The red, white, and blue were chosen in part as colours of liberty, echoing other flags of freedom of the age. The off-centre cross marks Norway as one of the Nordic family of nations while giving it a distinctive and widely admired design.
Norway was historically a Lutheran Protestant country, with the Church of Norway long established as a state church before that formal link was loosened in recent years. Like its Nordic neighbours, Norway is today highly secular: many remain nominal members of the church, but regular worship is uncommon and a large share of people are non-religious. Immigration has introduced other faiths, while older traditions survive among the indigenous Sami people of the north.
Norwegian food reflects a cold climate and a deep relationship with the sea. Fish is central, above all salmon and cod, eaten fresh, smoked, cured, and dried, the dried cod once a major export. Lamb and game feature in the mountains, and a distinctive brown cheese, made from caramelised whey, is a national favourite. Preserving food for the long winter shaped many traditional dishes, and hearty, simple fare remains at the heart of the table.
Norway's mountainous terrain and northern climate leave little land for farming, which concentrates in the south and along the coast, producing grains, potatoes, and dairy and meat from livestock, including sheep grazed on mountain pastures. The sea, however, is Norway's true field: the country is one of the world's largest exporters of seafood and the global leader in farmed salmon, raised in the cold, clean waters of its fjords.
The Viking Age made Norway a force across the medieval North Atlantic and left a lasting cultural legacy. The peaceful dissolution of its union with Sweden in 1905 founded the modern independent state. The defining event of recent times was the discovery of oil and gas in the North Sea in the late 1960s, which transformed Norway into one of the richest countries in the world, wealth it has carefully saved in an enormous sovereign fund for future generations.
Norway has a population of around 5.5 million people, small for so large a country, concentrated in the south and in cities such as the capital, Oslo. It consistently ranks among the world's leaders in standard of living, life expectancy, and human development. Once highly homogeneous, Norway has grown more diverse through immigration in recent decades. In the far north live the Sami, an indigenous people with their own language and traditions, including reindeer herding.
