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Vikings, fjords and trolls Somewhere, there is a country
where people don’t have curtains
and leave the bedroom light on all
night, just in case a lost wanderer
knocks at their door looking for
shelter. Somewhere, there is a land
where people leave their cars
unlocked, with the engine running,
at supermarket parking lots while
they go shopping. Somewhere…
Not so far away. Kongeriket
Norge. Better known as Norway.
People
It is said that Norwegians themselves are the
country’s greatest asset. Not only are they hospitable,
friendly and kind, they are also rich
and very, very proud that they are who they
are. And no wonder. With the per-capita GDP
of over 40,000 dollars, inflation of less than 2%
and only 4% unemployment, Norway has been
ranked by the UN as the world’s top country to
live in for the last three years running! Ethnically,
the 4.6 million Norwegians are Germanic,
although in the far north there are communities
of Lapps (Sami) who first came to the
area more than ten thousand years ago. In recent
years, Norway has become home to increasing
numbers of immigrants and foreign
workers from various parts of the world, who
now total over 300,000. Famous Norwegians
include the dramatist Henrik Ibsen, painter Edvard
Munch and composer Edvard Grieg. Contemporary
Norwegians are open, outgoing people
who enjoy hiking in the mountains, cycling
and doing winter sports, even though the vast
majority (over 75%) live in cities.
Location
Norway is situated in the western part of the
Scandinavian peninsula. It extends about
1,770 km from the North Sea along the Norwegian
Sea to more than 480 km above the Arctic
Circle; the farthest north of any European country.
Nearly 70% of Norway is uninhabitable and
covered by mountains, glaciers, moors and rivers.
The hundreds of deep fjords that cut into the
coastline give the country an overall seafront of
almost 20,000 kilometers–half the diameter of
the Equator. In terms of territory, Norway is
Europe’s sixth largest country, but the density
of population is only 14 people per square kilometer.
Its capital and largest city is Oslo, with
well over half a million inhabitants. Other major
cities include the beautifully located “capital
of fjords”–Bergen (half the size of Oslo), as
well as Stavanger and Trondheim (with almost
200,000 inhabitants each).
Language
The Norwegian language (Norsk) has two varieties:
Bokmål and Nynorsk. The former developed
from written Danish and evolved into the
Eastern Norwegian dialect.
The latter–literally
New Norwegian–
was created by Ivar
Aasen, a 19th-century
linguist, who compiled
a number of native dialects
from the western
part of the country.
Bokmal is more widespread;
it is spoken in
Oslo and other larger
cities. Nynorsk is used
by approximately 15%
of the population. Curiously
enough, there
are about 20,000 native
speakers of Sami,
the Lapp minority dialect,
which is still an official language in six Norwegian
municipalities. Norway is in the top rank
of nations in the number of books printed per capita,
even though Norwegian is one of the world’s
smallest language groups. In fact, the language
is getting more and more popular among foreign
speakers who plan to live and work in Norway. For
instance, FELBERG offers courses in Norwegian
in some of the school’s branches across Poland.
It is said that every Norwegian speaks English,
though. Indeed, language education is very important
in Norwegian schools. The ratio of young
Norwegians who speak fluent English is practically
a hundred percent these days. This may be further
helped by the fact that foreign films are never
translated or dubbed on Norwegian TV!
History
Norwegians consider themselves descendants of
the Vikings. Most Europeans see those infamous
Norsemen as cruel robbers who once traveled
the seas and ravaged foreign lands, but for Scandinavian
people the Viking period (9th to 11th
centuries) was one of glory, expansion, and
for Norwegians–national unification. They say
their ancestors in horned helmets don’t deserve
the bad press–they were also peaceful merchants
who civilized numerous northern lands
(including Iceland and parts of modern-day
Scotland and Ireland). It was the Viking monarch
Olaf III Haraldsson who began converting
the Norwegians to Christianity in the 11th
century. Nowadays, next to trolls and fjords, Vikings
are among the most recognizable images
of Norway. After 1442, Norway was ruled by
Danish kings, then it was united with Sweden.
Norway’s current king is Harald V, but his reign
is purely symbolic and ceremonial. Recently, an
important debate was held over Norway’s membership
in the European Union. In the 1994 referendum,
voters rejected seeking membership
for their nation in the EU. As a consequence,
Norway is a neutral country that, e.g., has not
adopted the euro as its official currency.
Tourism
Everybody should visit Norway. It’s a country
of incredible natural diversity, far-flung and unspoiled,
reaching above the Arctic Circle but with
a surprisingly mild climate in the south. It owes its
immense tourist potential to the legendary fjords,
wild mountain ranges, herds of reindeers grazing
in the vast fields, and above all–the breathtaking
space it offers. A fjord is a valley formed
by glaciers and filled with the sea to form a steepwalled
inlet. Norway’s largest fjord (Sognefjord)
is almost 200 kilometers long! UNESCO has included
all Norwegian fjords on its World Her itage
List, and National Geographic has ranked
them the most popular of all World Heritage sites.
The infrastructure in Norway also helps develop
tourism. The scale and size of Norwegian roads,
bridges and tunnels is hard to rival anywhere else
in Europe. The country has more than 90,000 km
of freeways and as many as 102 airports. The
world’s longest solid-rock tunnel is in Norway
and it’s 25 km long. Even though the country
boasts 4,200 kilometers of railways, it might be
a good idea to do some hitch-hiking there: the
drivers are reputed to be so helpful that you won’t
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