History - Norway - page 856

and another at Akershus , in 1308, to defend Oslo harbour. The transfer of the national cap-
ital from Bergen to Oslo soon followed. When Håkon V's grandson Magnus united Nor-
way with Sweden in 1319, Norway began a decline that would last for 200 years. Once-
great Norway had become just another province of its neighbours.
In August 1349 the Black Death arrived in Norway on board an English ship via Ber-
gen. The bubonic plague would eventually kill one-third of Europe's population. In Nor-
way, land fell out of cultivation, towns were ruined, trading activities faltered and the na-
tional coffers decreased by 65%. In Norway, as much as 80% of the nobility perished. Be-
cause their peasant workforce had also been decimated, the survivors were forced to return
to the land, forever changing the Norwegian power-base and planting the seeds for an
egalitarianism that continues to define Norway to this day.
By 1387 Norway had lost control of Iceland. Ten years later, Queen Margaret of Den-
mark formed the Kalmar Union of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, with Eric of Pomerania
as king. Margaret's neglect of Norway continued into the 15th century, when trade links
with Iceland were broken and Norway's Greenland colonies mysteriously disappeared
without a trace.
In 1469 Orkney and Shetland were pawned - supposedly a temporary measure - to the
Scottish Crown by the Danish-Norwegian King Christian I, who had to raise money for his
daughter's dowry. Just three years later the Scots annexed both island groups.
Buffeted by these winds of change, Norway had become a shadow of its former self.
The only apparent constant was the country's staunch Christian faith. But even in the coun-
try's faith there were fundamental changes afoot. In 1537, the Reformation replaced the in-
cumbent Catholic faith with Lutheran Protestantism and the transformation from the Nor-
way of the Vikings was all but complete.
The mystery behind the disappearance of the Greenland colonies is examined in Jared
Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive .
According to some linguists, Viking gods gave their names to the days of the week in Eng-
lish - Tuesday (Tyr's Day), Wednesday (Odin's Day), Thursday (Thor's Day) and Friday
(Freyr's Day).