1.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
2.
Monarchy of Norway
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The Norwegian monarch is the monarchical head of state of Norway, which is a constitutional and hereditary monarchy with a parliamentary system. The present monarch is King Harald V, who has reigned since 17 January 1991, succeeding his father, the heir apparent is his only son, Crown Prince Haakon. The crown prince undertakes various public functions, as does the kings wife. The crown prince also acts as regent in the kings absence, there are several other members of the Royal Family, including the kings daughter, grandchildren and siblings. Whilst the Constitution of Norway grants important executive powers to the King, formally the King appoints the government according to his own judgement, but parliamentary practice has been in place since 1884. Constitutional practice has replaced the meaning of the word King in most articles of the constitution from the king personally to the elected government. The powers vested in the monarch are significant, but are treated only as reserve powers, the King does not, by convention, have direct participation in government. He ratifies laws and royal resolutions, receives and sends envoys from and to foreign countries and he has a more tangible influence as the symbol of national unity. The annual New Years Eve speech is one occasion when the King traditionally raises negative issues, the King is also Supreme Commander of the Norwegian Armed Forces and Grand Master of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav and of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit. The King has no role in the Church of Norway. The position of King of Norway has been in existence since the unification of Norway in 872. In recent years members of the Socialist Left party have proposed the abolition of the monarchy during each new session of parliament and this gives the Norwegian monarchy the unique status of being a popularly elected royal family and receiving regular formal confirmations of support from the Storting. Prior to and in the phase of the Viking Age Norway was divided into several smaller kingdoms. Harald Fairhair was the first king of Norway, the boundaries of Fairhairs kingdom were not identical to those of present-day Norway, and upon his death the kingship was shared among his sons. Some historians emphasise the actual control over the country and assert that Olaf II, alias Saint Olaf. Olaf is generally held to have been the force behind Norways final conversion to Christianity. In the 12th and 13th centuries the Norwegian kingdom was at its geographical and cultural peak, the kingdom included Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Shetland, Orkney and other smaller areas in the British Isles. The king had diplomatic relations with most of the European kingdoms and formed alliances with Scotland and Castile, large castles such as Haakons Hall and cathedrals, the foremost being Nidaros Cathedral, were built
3.
League of Nations
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The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organisation whose mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament, at its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, however, the Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them, after a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, the onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years, the United Nations replaced it after the end of the Second World War on 20 April 1946 and inherited a number of agencies and organisations founded by the League. As historians William H. Harbaugh and Ronald E. Powaski point out, the organisation was international in scope, with a third of the members of parliaments serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its aims were to encourage governments to solve disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were held to help refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure consisted of a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League, at the start of the 20th century, two power blocs emerged from alliances between the European Great Powers. It was these alliances that, at the start of the First World War in 1914 and this was the first major war in Europe between industrialised countries, and the first time in Western Europe that the results of industrialisation had been dedicated to war. By the time the fighting ended in November 1918, the war had had an impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world, the First World War was described as the war to end all wars, the causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term League of Nations in 1914, together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then governing Liberal Party. In Dickinsons 1915 pamphlet After the War he wrote of his League of Peace as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation
4.
Sigrid Undset
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Sigrid Undset was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old, in 1924, she converted to Catholicism. She fled Norway for the United States in 1940 because of her opposition to Nazi Germany and the German invasion and occupation of Norway, but returned after World War II ended in 1945. Her best-known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy about life in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages and its three volumes were published between 1920 and 1922. Sigrid Undset was born on 20 May 1882 in the town of Kalundborg, Denmark, at the childhood home of her mother. Undset was the eldest of three daughters and she and her family moved to Norway when she was two. She grew up in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, when she was only 11 years old, her father, the Norwegian archaeologist Ingvald Martin Undset, died at the age of 40 after a long illness. She joined the Norwegian Authors Union in 1907 and from 1933 through 1935 headed its Literary Council, while employed at office work, Undset wrote and studied. She was 16 years old when she made her first attempt at writing a set in the Nordic Middle Ages. The manuscript, a novel set in medieval Denmark, was ready by the time she was 22. It was turned down by the publishing house, nonetheless, two years later, she completed another manuscript, much less voluminous than the first at only 80 pages. She had put aside the Middle Ages and had produced a realistic description of a woman with a middle-class background in contemporary Kristiania. This book was refused by the publishers at first but it was subsequently accepted. The title was Fru Marta Oulie, and the opening sentence scandalised readers, thus, at the age of 25, Undset made her literary debut with a short realistic novel on adultery, set against a contemporary background. It created a stir, and she found herself ranked as a young author in Norway. During the years up to 1919, Undset published a number of set in contemporary Kristiania. Her contemporary novels of the period 1907–1918 are about the city and they are stories of working people, of trivial family destinies, of the relationship between parents and children. Her main subjects are women and their love, or, as she herself put it—in her typically curt and ironic manner—the immoral kind
5.
Willy Brandt
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He was the first Social Democrat chancellor since 1930. Brandt was originally considered one of the leaders of the wing of the SPD. He served as Foreign Minister and as Vice Chancellor in Kurt Georg Kiesingers cabinet, Brandt was controversial on both the right wing, for his Ostpolitik, and on the left wing, for his support of American policies, including the Vietnam War, and right-wing authoritarian regimes. The Brandt Report became a measure for describing the general North-South divide in world economics and politics between an affluent North and a poor South. Brandt was also known for his fierce anti-communist policies at the domestic level, Brandt resigned as chancellor in 1974, after Günter Guillaume, one of his closest aides, was exposed as an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret service. Willy Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Carl Frahm in the Free City of Lübeck on 18 December 1913 and his mother was Martha Frahm, a single parent, who worked as a cashier for a department store. His father was an accountant from Hamburg named John Möller, whom Brandt never met, as his mother worked six days a week, he was mainly brought up by his mothers stepfather, Ludwig Frahm, and his second wife, Dora. After passing his Abitur in 1932 at Johanneum zu Lübeck, he became an apprentice at the shipbroker and he joined the Socialist Youth in 1929 and the Social Democratic Party in 1930. He left the SPD to join the left wing Socialist Workers Party, which was allied to the POUM in Spain. In 1933, using his connections with the port and its ships and it was at this time that he adopted the pseudonym Willy Brandt to avoid detection by Nazi agents. In 1934, he took part in the founding of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations, Brandt was in Germany from September to December 1936, disguised as a Norwegian student named Gunnar Gaasland. The real Gunnar Gaasland was married to Gertrud Meyer from Lübeck in a marriage of convenience to protect her from deportation, Meyer had joined Brandt in Norway in July 1933. In 1937, during the Civil War, Brandt worked in Spain as a journalist, in 1938, the German government revoked his citizenship, so he applied for Norwegian citizenship. In 1940, he was arrested in Norway by occupying German forces, on his release, he escaped to neutral Sweden. In August 1940, he became a Norwegian citizen, receiving his passport from the Norwegian legation in Stockholm, in exile in Norway and Sweden Brandt learned Norwegian and Swedish. Brandt spoke Norwegian fluently, and retained a relationship with Norway. In late 1946, Brandt returned to Berlin, working for the Norwegian government, in 1948, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany and became a German citizen again, formally adopting the pseudonym Willy Brandt as his legal name. In 1950, Brandt, being a member of the federal parliament, being confronted with this during his life, Brandt always denied
6.
1945 in Norway
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Events in the year 1945 in Norway. 9 February -29 Norwegians were executed by the Nazi regime in Norway as reprisal of Marthinsens death, among others Jon Vislie, Kaare Sundby and Haakon Sæthre. The extent and severity of the reprisals shocked the Norwegian population and government-in-exile,9 February - Black Friday, a large air battle between German and British aircraft over Sunnfjord. It was the largest aerial clash over Norway during World War II,7 May - Knut Hamsun released his obituary of Adolf Hitler. 8 May - The occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany ended as German forces agreed to an unconditional surrender,8 May - Grini concentration camp was liberated, only to be used later for treason suspects under the name Ilebu. 8 May - Josef Terboven and Wilhelm Rediess committed suicide,9 May - Vidkun Quisling was arrested. 11 May - Sverre Riisnæs gave up his entrenchment at Skallum farm, jonas Lie died during the entrenchment. 11 May - Akershus Fortress surrendered by the Germans to Terje Rollem acting on behalf of the resistance,13 May - Heinrich Fehlis was arrested and committed suicide. 14 May - Henry Rinnan was arrested,31 May - Government returned from exile in London. 6 June - King Haakon VII of Norway returned to Norway,14 June - Knut Hamsun was apprehended. 20 June - Paal Berg gave up plans to form a broad,25 June - Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold resigned as Haakon VII appointed Einar Gerhardsen to head an interim government composed of all political parties. 6 July - Norway declares war on Japan,25 July – Gerhardsens First Cabinet was appointed. 17 August - Reidar Haaland was executed,8 October - The 1945 Parliamentary election takes place. 24 October - Vidkun Quisling was executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress,5 November – Gerhardsens Second Cabinet was appointed. 24 December - Henry Rinnan escaped from prison, only to be apprehended later, IG Farben was the largest stock-holder in Norsk Hydro. The two companies first formed a partnership in 1927. The newspaper Verdens Gang was founded, the periodical Kvinnen og Tiden is founded. Municipal and county elections are held throughout the country
7.
1978 in Norway
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Events in the year 1978 in Norway. All eighteen people on board are killed in the crash,28 August – At Hopen, Svalbard, a Soviet Tupolev Tu-16 aircraft accidentally crashes at the sides of Werenskioldfjellet. 7 September – Skateboarding is banned in Norway,22 October – Lillestrøm wins the 1978 Norwegian Football Cup final by beating Brann 2–1. Harald Sverdrup, poet and childrens writer, is awarded the Dobloug Prize literature award. B, sculptor Trond Frønes, musician Ray Kay, photographer 16 January – Otto Dahl, politician 16 January – Svein Helling, sport shooter 18 January – John Lyng, barrister and politician. 21 January – Olav Sundal, gymnast and Olympic silver medallist,21 February – Raoul Heide, fencer. 3 March – Georg Morgenstierne, linguist 13 March – Kaare Bache,1 April – Olaf Nygaard, cyclist 18 April – Alex Brinchmann, childrens physician and songwriter, novelist, playwright and crime writer. 25 April – Arne Rustadstuen, Nordic skier, Olympic bronze medallist and World Champion 4 May – Kolbjørn Fjeld, librarian,8 May – Klara Amalie Skoglund, politician 9 May – Halvor Bunkholt, politician 20 May – Bjarne Brustad, composer and violinist. 15 August – Viggo Brun, mathematician 15 August – Hartvig Kiran, poet,30 September – Eiliv Skard, classical philologist. 2 October – Sjur Johnsen, wrestler,15 October – Rolf Stenersen, track and field athlete, businessman, art collector, non-fiction writer, essayist, novelist, playwright and biographer. 17 October – Robert Giertsen, sailor 17 October – Sigurd Evensmo, author, poulsson, judge Lita Prahl, actress and costume designer Carl Søyland, newspaper editor
8.
2008 in Norway
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Monarch, Harald V Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg January 1 – The Agency for Public Management and eGovernment is established. January 1 – Nordic Battlegroup consisting of forces from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Republic of Ireland. January 1 – Mercury becomes banned from use in Norway, January 11 – Norwegian police announce that they have arrested a 55-year-old man suspected of being the sexual predator known as The Pocket Man. 13 January – A school in Lørenskog is closed after threats of a school shooting came from a video on YouTube, a 15-year-old was arrested for the threat. January 21 – The OBX Index drops 6. 4%, then the second biggest fall since August 1991, February 21 – An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the moment magnitude scale hits Svalbard. This oblique-slip shock had a maximum Mercalli intensity of IV and was the strongest earthquake ever to hit Norway, February 23 – The 8 km Eiksund Tunnel near Volda in Møre og Romsdal is opened. February 26 – The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is officially opened,28 February – Three people were arrested in Oslo, accused of having participated in the financing of terrorist acts abroad. February 29 – Anniken Huitfeldt is appointed Minister of Children and Equality, March 1 – Austrian Matthias Lanzinger collides with a gate during a World Cup Super-G run at Kvitfjell, resulting in injuries that lead to his left leg being amputated below the knee two days later. 28 March – Norway recognizes Kosovo as an independent state,12 April – Official opening of the Oslo Opera House. 15 May – Ingeborg Synnøve Midtømme is appointed bishop of the diocese of Møre, june 11 – Norway legalises same-sex marriage. September 9 – The OBX Index drops 5. 57%, then the fourth biggest drop ever. September 29 – In conjunction with the liquidity crisis the index of Oslo Stock Exchange drops 8. 3%, then its third largest drop ever in one day. October 6 – The OBX Index drops 9. 71%, the third largest drop ever in one day, October 8 – The OBX Index drops 6. Author Stig Sæterbakken resigns as the content director in protest over the decision. October 15 – The OBX Index drops 8. 81% October 24 – The OBX Index drops 9, March 29– The Norwegian Premier League 2008 kicks off, lasting through November 2. November 2– The Norwegian Premier League 2008 ends, september 29 – Emma Tallulah Behn, the daughter of Princess Märtha Louise of Norway and Ari Behn. December 15 – Anne-Catharina Vestly, childrens author December 27 – Arild Andresen, footballer and ice hockey player
9.
Spitsbergen
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Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway. Constituting the westernmost bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea, Spitsbergen covers an area of 39,044 km2, making it the largest island in Norway and the 36th-largest in the world. Other settlements, in addition to research outposts, are the Russian mining community of Barentsburg, the community of Ny-Ålesund. The island was first used as a base in the 17th and 18th centuries. Coal mining started at the end of the 19th century and several permanent communities were established, the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 recognized Norwegian sovereignty and established Svalbard as a free economic zone and a demilitarized zone. The Norwegian Store Norske and the Russian Arktikugol remain the mining companies. Research and tourism have become important supplementary industries, featuring among others the University Centre in Svalbard, no roads connect the settlements, instead snowmobiles, aircraft, and boats serve as local transport. Svalbard Airport, Longyear provides the point of entry and exit. The island has an Arctic climate, although significantly higher temperatures than other places at the same latitude. The flora benefits from the period of midnight sun, which compensates for the polar night. Svalbard is a ground for many seabirds, and also supports polar bears, reindeer. Six national parks protect the largely untouched, yet fragile environment, the island has many glaciers, mountains and fjords. Spitsbergen was named by its discoverer, the Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz, the name Spitsbergen, meaning “pointed mountains”, was at first applied to both the main island and the archipelago as a whole. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English whalers referred to the islands as Greenland, the Spitzbergen spelling was used in English during the 19th century, for instance by Beechey, Laing, and the Royal Society. In 1906, the Arctic explorer Sir Martin Conway thought that the Spitzbergen spelling was incorrect, preferring Spitsbergen as he noted that the name was Dutch and this had little effect on British practice. In 1920, the international treaty determining the fate of the islands was entitled the Spitsbergen Treaty, the islands were generally referred to in the USA as Spitsbergen from that time, although the spelling Spitzbergen was also commonly used through the 20th century. Under Norwegian governance, the archipelago was named Svalbard in 1925, by the end of the 20th century, this usage had become common. The first confirmed and recorded sighting of the island by a European was by Willem Barentsz, the first good map with the east coast roughly indicated, appeared in 1623, printed by Willem Janszoon Blaeu
10.
Knut Hamsun
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Knut Hamsun was a major Norwegian writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Hamsuns work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to the subject, perspective and he published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, and some essays. The young Hamsun objected to realism and naturalism and he argued that the main object of modernist literature should be the intricacies of the human mind, that writers should describe the whisper of blood, and the pleading of bone marrow. Hamsun is considered the leader of the Neo-Romantic revolt at the turn of the 20th century, with such as Hunger, Mysteries, Pan. His later works—in particular his Nordland novels—were influenced by the Norwegian new realism, portraying life in rural Norway and often employing local dialect, irony. Hamsun is considered to be one of the most influential and innovative literary stylists of the past hundred years, isaac Bashevis Singer called Hamsun the father of the modern school of literature in his every aspect—his subjectiveness, his fragmentariness, his use of flashbacks, his lyricism. The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun, on August 4,2009, the Knut Hamsun Centre was opened in Hamarøy. Since 1916, several of Hamsuns works have been adapted into motion pictures, Knut Hamsun was born as Knud Pedersen in Lom in the Gudbrandsdal valley of Norway. He was the son of Tora Olsdatter and Peder Pedersen. When he was three, the moved to Hamsund, Hamarøy in Nordland. They were poor and an uncle had invited them to farm his land for him, at nine Knut was separated from his family and lived with his uncle Hans Olsen, who needed help with the post office he ran. Olsen used to beat and starve his nephew, and Hamsun later stated that his chronic nervous difficulties were due to the way his uncle treated him. In 1874 he finally escaped back to Lom, for the five years he did any job for money, he was a store clerk, peddler, shoemakers apprentice, sheriffs assistant. At 17 he became an apprentice, at about the same time he started to write. He asked businessman Erasmus Zahl to give him significant monetary support, Hamsun later used Zahl as a model for the character Mack appearing in his novels Pan, Dreamers, and Benoni and Rosa. He spent several years in America, traveling and working at various jobs, working all those odd jobs paid off, and he published his first book about it, Den Gaadefulde, En Kjærlighedshistorie fra Nordland. In his second novel Bjørger, he attempted to imitate Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsons writing style of the Icelandic saga narrative, the melodramatic story follows a poet Bjørger and his love for Laura. This book was published under the pseudonym Knud Pedersen Hamsund and this book later served as the basis for Victoria, En Kærligheds Historie
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