58 Fun Facts About Norway

Which giant sea monster of Norwegian folklore was said to drag whole ships down into the deep?

The Kraken was said to show only its back, which sailors could mistake for solid land; a bishop set the fishermen's tales down in his natural history of Norway in the 1750s.

Which animal do the Sámi people of northern Norway traditionally herd?

Reindeer herding is so bound up with Sámi culture that Norwegian law reserves it for people of Sámi descent across the Sámi grazing districts, so most Norwegians could not start a herd there.

Galdhøpiggen, Norway's highest peak, rises in which range named from Norse myth?

Jotunheimen also holds the runner-up, Glittertind, whose summit ice cap once lifted it above Galdhøpiggen's 2,469 metres; the ice has since melted away and settled the argument.

Which fjord, about 205 km long, is Norway's longest and deepest?

Sognefjord plunges more than 1,300 metres far inland yet is only 100 to 200 metres deep where it meets the sea, because a rock sill lies across its mouth.

Norway's official coastline, traced around every fjord and island, would wrap about two and a half times around what?

The Earth is about 40,000 km around, while Norway's official shoreline runs to roughly 100,000 km, because fjords and countless islands fold a coast only about 2,500 km long in a straight line.

Which Arctic archipelago is part of Norway yet outside the Schengen Area and any county?

Svalbard came under Norwegian sovereignty through the 1920 Svalbard Treaty, which gives every signatory equal economic access; that clause is why the Soviet Union and then Russia have run the mining town of Barentsburg since 1932.

What is the largest settlement on Norway's Arctic archipelago north of the mainland?

Longyearbyen is named after John Munro Longyear, the American whose company began mining coal there; its graveyard closed to new burials after bodies were found not to decompose in the permafrost.

What is stored in the global vault dug deep into a mountain on Norway's Arctic archipelago?

Seeds kept as spare copies of the world's crop collections stay frozen in the permafrost even if the cooling fails; a gene bank driven out of Aleppo by Syria's war took its deposits back in 2015 to regrow its stock.

Hornindalsvatnet in western Norway holds which European record for a lake?

Deepest: Hornindalsvatnet goes down 514 metres, so although its surface lies 53 metres above sea level, its bed sits about 460 metres below it.

The Lærdal Tunnel in western Norway holds which world record?

Longest for road traffic: the 24.5 km drive takes about 20 minutes, so its builders broke it up with three large, brightly lit caves to stop drivers losing concentration.

Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock, is a flat-topped cliff rising 604 metres above which fjord?

Lysefjord lies 604 metres below the flat top of Preikestolen; before tourists arrived in the early 1900s and the 'pulpit' name caught on, locals called the rock Hyvlatonnå, the plane's tooth.

The Maelstrom, the tidal whirlpool that gave English its word for a violent vortex, swirls off which part of Norway?

Lofoten's Moskstraumen is a stretch of tidal eddies between two islands; Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne, drawing on exaggerated old accounts, turned it into a vortex that swallows ships whole.

The old Hanseatic wharf in Norway's second city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is called what?

Bryggen was the Hanseatic League's trading base in Bergen from about 1350 to 1754; fire swept its wooden rows again and again, and after the great blaze of 1702 they were rebuilt on the old plan.

Which medieval name of Trondheim, still carried by its cathedral, was briefly restored as its official name in 1930?

Nidaros returned by law in 1930 even though residents had voted more than ten to one to stay Trondhjem; after a bitter row, parliament settled on Trondheim the following year.

Which city in the far north earned the nickname 'Paris of the North' in the 19th century?

Tromsø is thought to owe the name to early visitors who were struck by how sophisticated its people were so far north; by then the town was the base for hunting and exploring expeditions into the Arctic.

The Hurtigruten coastal route sails from Bergen to which town near the Russian border?

Kirkenes, a few kilometres from the Russian border, ends a route that began in 1893 as a state-backed express for mail and passengers and grew into the main link between Norway's north and south.

Oslo was known by what name from 1624 until 1925?

Christiania honoured King Christian IV, who rebuilt the fire-ravaged city beside Akershus Fortress in 1624 and named it after himself; the name reverted to Oslo in 1925.

According to tradition, which king first unified Norway in 872 after the Battle of Hafrsfjord?

Harald Fairhair got his nickname, the sagas say, by vowing not to cut his hair until he ruled all Norway; the sea battle at Hafrsfjord, traditionally dated 872, is remembered as the moment he did.

Which Norse explorer is thought to have been the first European to set foot in North America, around 1000 AD?

Leif Erikson, a son of Erik the Red, sailed west from Greenland to a land the sagas call Vinland about five centuries before Columbus; Norse ruins found at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland back the story.

From 1537 to 1814 Norway was ruled in union with which country?

Denmark, on the losing side of the Napoleonic Wars, was forced to give Norway up in 1814 but kept Norway's old dependencies Iceland and Greenland, which is why they stayed Danish.

Norway's national day, 17 May, marks the signing of what in 1814?

The Constitution was signed at Eidsvoll on 17 May 1814; the day's centrepiece is not a military parade but processions of schoolchildren, a custom the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson set going.

What is the Norwegian name for the national costume worn in 17 May parades?

Bunad looks ancient, yet the writer Hulda Garborg only launched the term in 1903, and most of today's designs were composed in the 20th century, loosely based on old rural dress.

In August 1905, Norwegian men voted 368,208 to 184 in favour of what?

Ending the union with Sweden won by 368,208 votes to 184; women, who could not yet vote, gathered nearly 280,000 signatures of their own in support within three weeks.

The Danish prince who became Norway's king in 1905 took which traditional royal name?

Prince Carl of Denmark took the name Haakon VII, reviving a medieval royal name, and insisted on a November 1905 referendum, won by nearly 79%, confirming Norwegians wanted a monarchy before he accepted the crown.

After Germany invaded in April 1940, Norway's king and government went into exile in which city?

London housed Norway's king and cabinet for five years after he refused German demands to accept a puppet government, vowing to abdicate rather than give in; his broadcasts home made him a symbol of resistance.

Which Norwegian collaborator's surname became a synonym for 'traitor' in several languages?

Vidkun Quisling went on the radio to declare himself prime minister the day Germany invaded in 1940; within days The Times was calling traitors 'quislings', and he was shot for treason in October 1945.

In 1943 Norwegian commandos sabotaged a Telemark plant to deny Nazi Germany what?

Heavy water was wanted for Germany's atomic research, and Vemork was Europe's only regular producer; after the raid wrecked the plant's cells, the resistance sank the ferry taking the last stock to Germany.

Who became King of Norway on 17 January 1991?

Harald V had waited nine years to marry Sonja Haraldsen, a shopkeeper's daughter, while his father King Olav weighed whether the heir to the throne could wed a commoner; consent came in 1968.

In a 1994 referendum, Norwegians narrowly voted against joining what?

The European Union was turned down by 52.2% in 1994, as its forerunner the European Community had been by 53.5% in 1972; Norway takes part in the single market through the European Economic Area instead.

Norway's Government Pension Fund Global was set up to invest surplus revenue from what?

Petroleum income goes into the fund because the oil will one day run out: every krone is invested outside Norway, and by 2026 the fund held about 1.5% of all the shares in the world's listed companies.

Norway's electricity comes overwhelmingly from which single source?

Hydropower supplies roughly nine-tenths of Norway's electricity; because water can wait behind a dam in a way wind cannot, the country built reservoirs big enough to spread its supply across the seasons.

In 2020, what made up more than half of Norway's new-car sales?

Fully electric vehicles took 54% of new-car sales in 2020 because Norway had spared them the steep purchase tax and 25% VAT charged on petrol and diesel cars, and cut their road tolls and ferry fares.

Norway is the world's largest producer of which fish?

Salmon farms left Norway with more fish than it could sell in the 1980s, so its exporters talked Japan, where eating salmon raw was unheard of, into putting it on sushi.

Lutefisk is dried whitefish that has been treated with what before cooking?

Lye, the 'lut' in the name and once made from birch ash, softens the dried cod into a jelly-like fish that has to be rinsed in fresh water before it can be cooked.

Brunost, Norway's sweet brown cheese, gets its colour and taste from caramelising the sugars in what?

Whey, the liquid left over from cheesemaking, is boiled with milk and cream until its sugar caramelises; the result is so rich in fat and sugar that a lorry-load once burned for days in a road tunnel.

Alongside Bokmål, what is Norway's other official written standard of Norwegian?

Nynorsk was pieced together in the 1800s by the linguist Ivar Aasen, who travelled the country collecting its dialects; it went by the name Landsmål until parliament renamed it in 1929.

In the late 800s Ohthere, in one of the earliest texts to name Norway, described his travels to which English king?

Alfred the Great heard the seafarer's tale, which survives in an Old English history: Ohthere told him he lived 'northmost of all Norwegians' and had sailed on round the top of Scandinavia to the White Sea.

Which Norwegian painter created The Scream in 1893?

Edvard Munch painted The Scream in 1893 and made four versions in all; both painted ones have been stolen from Oslo museums and recovered.

The Scream was stolen from Norway's National Gallery in 1994 on the day which event opened?

The Lillehammer Winter Olympics opened that same day, 12 February; two thieves needed only a ladder and under a minute to take the painting, which was recovered undamaged about three months later.

Which Norwegian author of A Doll's House is called 'the father of modern drama'?

Henrik Ibsen ends the play with Nora walking out on her husband and children; when a German theatre planned to rewrite that, he grudgingly wrote an alternative ending himself in which she stays.

In which city was Peer Gynt composer Edvard Grieg born?

Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen in 1843; the violin star Ole Bull, a family friend, spotted the 15-year-old's talent and urged that he be sent to study music in Leipzig.

Roald Amundsen's party beat which rival explorer's expedition to the South Pole by five weeks?

Robert Falcon Scott reached the Pole on foot with four companions five weeks after Amundsen's 14 December 1911, and all five died on the march back; the Norwegians, on skis behind dog teams, got home safely.

Fridtjof Nansen, who crossed Greenland on skis in 1888, later won the Nobel Peace Prize for what?

Nansen won the 1922 Peace Prize for helping displaced victims of World War I as the League of Nations' first High Commissioner for Refugees; his 'Nansen passport' for stateless people was recognised by more than 50 countries.

Which Norwegian drifted 101 days across the Pacific on the raft Kon-Tiki in 1947?

Thor Heyerdahl built the raft as a copy of Inca craft and rode wind and current from Peru to a Polynesian reef to show the crossing could be done; the film of the voyage won an Oscar.

Norwegian trio a-ha topped the US chart in 1985 with which song, known for its pencil-sketch video?

Take On Me flopped outside Norway when it first came out in 1984; re-recorded and given its part-animated video, it made a-ha the first Norwegian band to top the American chart a year later.

Bjørn Dæhlie won eight Olympic golds in the 1990s in which sport?

Cross-country skiing made Bjørn Dæhlie the most decorated Winter Olympian of his day; he planned one last Games in 2002, but a fall on roller skis wrecked his back and ended his career first.

Magnus Carlsen became World Chess Champion in 2013 by defeating which reigning champion?

Viswanathan Anand had held the title since 2007 and was playing on home soil in Chennai, yet the 22-year-old Carlsen took it from him 6.5-3.5 without losing a single game.

Erling Haaland was born in 2000 in which English city, where his father was playing?

Leeds was where his father Alf-Inge played for Leeds United until 2000, before moving on to Manchester City, the very club Erling joined 22 years later.

Which children's author was born in Wales to Norwegian parents?

Roald Dahl was named after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen and spent his childhood summers in Norway; the boy in The Witches is brought up by a Norwegian grandmother.

Thor Bjørklund, a Norwegian carpenter, borrowed the idea of his plane to create which kitchen tool?

The cheese slicer began as an experiment with a carpenter's plane in Bjørklund's workshop; he filed for a patent in 1925, founded a firm to make it two years later, and it became a Norwegian export.

Norwegians long credited Johan Vaaler with inventing which everyday object, a claim now called a myth?

The paper clip legend rests on Vaaler's 1899 patent, but the superior Gem clip was already on sale in Britain; the story stuck, and wartime Norwegians even wore paper clips as a symbol of resistance.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which planet designer won an award for his work on Norway's coastline?

Slartibartfast, a planetary designer from Magrathea, specialises in fjords and is woken from a five-million-year sleep to help build a duplicate of our planet.

Norway's flag, adopted in 1821, sets a white-edged cross of which colour on a red field?

Blue completed the red, white and blue that the flag's designer, Fredrik Meltzer, called the colours of liberty, as flown by France, the Netherlands, the United States and Britain.

Which small rodent of Norway's mountains is famous for population booms every few years?

Lemming numbers explode in what Norwegians call lemming years: the animals strip the high ground bare and swarm down from the mountains, and then the population crashes again.

Which remote subantarctic territory is a Norwegian dependency, but not part of the Kingdom itself?

Bouvet Island was annexed in 1927 by a Norwegian expedition sent out for sealing and survey work; a British claim dating from 1825 was settled by diplomacy, and it became a dependency in 1930.

Storseisundet Bridge is the most prominent bridge on which Norwegian scenic road?

The Atlantic Ocean Road was built to join the island of Averøy to the mainland, hopping from skerry to skerry beside the open Norwegian Sea; it opened in 1989 and is now a national scenic route.

Which Norwegian rock ledge, reached by a day-long hike, juts out high above the lake Ringedalsvatnet?

Trolltunga was all but unvisited before 2010, with fewer than 1,000 hikers a year; by 2019 about 80,000 were making the round trip, a walk of ten hours or more.

Norwegian bands such as Mayhem and Emperor made which music genre a notorious export in the early 1990s?

Black metal's Norwegian scene made headlines far beyond music: a wave of church burnings began with Fantoft stave church in 1992, and a musician was convicted in 1994 of arson and of murdering Mayhem's guitarist.