Norway Trivia
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58 free Norway trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
60 free Norway trivia questions with answers. Sixty questions on Norway, from the obvious to the obscure. The geography round covers the longest fjord, the highest peak, the deepest lake in Europe, Svalbard's treaty oddities and the road tunnel that holds a world record. History runs from Harald Fairhair and Leif Erikson through four centuries under Denmark, the 1814 constitution, the near-unanimous 1905 vote to leave Sweden, the 1940 invasion, Quisling and the heavy-water saboteurs. The rest is the Norway people actually talk about: the oil fund that owns 1.5% of the world's listed companies, electric cars, salmon, lutefisk and brunost, The Scream and its thefts, Ibsen, Grieg, Amundsen, Nansen, Kon-Tiki, a-ha, Magnus Carlsen, Erling Haaland, and the Winter Olympics medal table Norway refuses to give up. There is even a question for Hitchhiker's Guide fans. It works for a pub quiz, a classroom or anyone planning a trip. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its regions, people and events, and the sentence that establishes it is shown under each explanation.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which giant sea monster of Norwegian folklore was said to drag whole ships down into the deep?
The Kraken
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.
Q 02Which animal do the Sámi people of northern Norway traditionally herd?
Reindeer
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.
Q 03Galdhøpiggen, Norway's highest peak, rises in which range named from Norse myth?
Jotunheimen
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.
Q 04Which fjord, about 205 km long, is Norway's longest and deepest?
Sognefjord
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.
Q 05Norway's official coastline, traced around every fjord and island, would wrap about two and a half times around what?
The Earth
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.
Q 06Which Arctic archipelago is part of Norway yet outside the Schengen Area and any county?
Svalbard
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.
Q 07What is the largest settlement on Norway's Arctic archipelago north of the mainland?
Longyearbyen
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.
Q 08What is stored in the global vault dug deep into a mountain on Norway's Arctic archipelago?
Seeds
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.
Q 09Hornindalsvatnet in western Norway holds which European record for a lake?
Deepest
Deepest: Hornindalsvatnet goes down 514 metres, so although its surface lies 53 metres above sea level, its bed sits about 460 metres below it.
Q 10The Lærdal Tunnel in western Norway holds which world record?
Longest for road traffic
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.
Q 11Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock, is a flat-topped cliff rising 604 metres above which fjord?
Lysefjord
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.
Q 12The Maelstrom, the tidal whirlpool that gave English its word for a violent vortex, swirls off which part of Norway?
Lofoten
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.
Q 13The old Hanseatic wharf in Norway's second city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is called what?
Bryggen
Q 21Norway's national day, 17 May, marks the signing of what in 1814?
The Constitution
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.
Q 22What is the Norwegian name for the national costume worn in 17 May parades?
Bunad
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.
Q 23In August 1905, Norwegian men voted 368,208 to 184 in favour of what?
Ending the union with Sweden
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.
Q 14Which medieval name of Trondheim, still carried by its cathedral, was briefly restored as its official name in 1930?
Nidaros
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.
Q 15Which city in the far north earned the nickname 'Paris of the North' in the 19th century?
Tromsø
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.
Q 16The Hurtigruten coastal route sails from Bergen to which town near the Russian border?
Kirkenes
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.
Q 17Oslo was known by what name from 1624 until 1925?
Christiania
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.
Q 18According to tradition, which king first unified Norway in 872 after the Battle of Hafrsfjord?
Harald Fairhair
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.
Q 19Which Norse explorer is thought to have been the first European to set foot in North America, around 1000 AD?
Leif Erikson
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.
Q 20From 1537 to 1814 Norway was ruled in union with which country?
Denmark
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.
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.
Q 24The Danish prince who became Norway's king in 1905 took which traditional royal name?
Haakon
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.
Q 25After Germany invaded in April 1940, Norway's king and government went into exile in which city?
London
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.
Q 26Which Norwegian collaborator's surname became a synonym for 'traitor' in several languages?
Quisling
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.
Q 27In 1943 Norwegian commandos sabotaged a Telemark plant to deny Nazi Germany what?
Heavy water
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.
Q 28Who became King of Norway on 17 January 1991?
Harald V
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.
Q 29In a 1994 referendum, Norwegians narrowly voted against joining what?
The European Union
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.
Q 30Norway's Government Pension Fund Global was set up to invest surplus revenue from what?
Petroleum
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.