Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WHY IS NORWAY ONE OF EUROPE'S OLDEST YET YOUNGEST
COUNTRIES?
Nation and country are imprecise terms, but nation is usually used to denote a population
bound by a common culture. Country denotes a nation with an organized, effective gov-
ernment. The beginnings of Norway as a nation are lost in the mists of time. Perhaps the
receding of an ice age around 10,000 BCE brought hunters and gatherers northward along
Norway's coast. The earliest European records of Northmen date from the Viking incur-
sions that began in the late 700s CE. Viking settlements were organized around clans and
chieftains, but sometime around 900, Harald Harfagre (Harold Fairhair) established him-
self as Norway's supreme ruler, its first countrywide king. Scandinavians frequently fought
each other and sometimes cooperated during Viking expeditions into Europe and the Brit-
ish Isles.
In 1380 Norway and Denmark became a united kingdom, and on Trinity Sunday 1397
(after an intrigue that spun around Queen Margarethe, the widow of King Haakon of Nor-
way), the three crowns of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden were united. Norway had been
previously devastated by the Black Death, and many of its warrior-leaders were dead. Ef-
fective power lay first with the Danes and then with the Swedes. (Norwegians now call this
the 400 years that Norway slept.) During the Danish hegemony, Norway was “Danicized”;
its culture, its government, and its written language became Danish.
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Eventually, Danish economic and military power receded, their ebb-tide engineered by
Napoleon. Within easy reach of his armies, Denmark, along with its dependent, Norway,
was forced to join Napoleon's alliance against Great Britain. Sweden, meanwhile, had
offered its throne to one of Napoleon's marshals, Bernadotte. The latter, now styled King
Karl Johan, persuaded Britain and its Russian ally to support Sweden's claim to Norway.
Norway's crown remained with Sweden until Norway's independence in 1905. To great
Norwegian rejoicing, then, the capital city of Swedish-Norway, Christiana, changed its
name to Oslo.
DO VIKINGS STILL LIVE?
Ask a Norwegian, and a likely answer will be that the Viking spirit is alive and well in Nor-
way. Norwegians derive deep satisfaction from solitary outdoor adventures—from single-
handed sailing and cross-country skiing to hiking over fells. A visitor to a remote farmstead
may see a bed with a tall headboard and short mattress pad. When asked, an elderly farmer
may boast that he sleeps as his grandfather did: sitting upright, ready to spring up to grapple
with intruders.
Norwegians have long claimed a proprietary interest in polar exploration, an interest
easy to understand given their far-north location. One of the first modern polar explorers
was Norway's Fritjhof Nansen (1861-1930). In 1888 he led a small party across Greenland
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