1.
Banknotes of the Norwegian krone
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Norwegian banknotes are circulated, in addition to Norwegian coins, with a denomination of Norwegian kroner, as standard units of currency in Norway. From 1877, after the establishment of the Scandinavian Monetary Union, the first 200 kroner banknote was first published in 1994. The others have been in used since 1877, banknotes of 5 and 10 kroner were in use until 1963 and 1983 when they were replaced by coins. From 1917-1925 and 1940-1950 there was a shortage of small change, the first edition was canceled in 1926, while the second edition was formally valid right up to 1999. From 1877, after the establishment of the Scandinavian Monetary Union, and until present day, Norwegian banknotes have included 1000,500,100, in 1994 the first 200 kroner note was issued. 5 and 10 kroner notes were used from 1877. During World War I and World War II and war aftermaths of 1917–1925 and 1940–1950, there was a shortage of change, the World War I edition was rendered invalid in 1926, whereas the World War II edition was technically valid until 1999. For more details see the section on historical Norwegian banknotes below, the 50 kroner note portrays Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, writer and collector of Norwegian folktales. Since 1999 the serial number has been printed with ultraviolet fluorescence, the previous edition, no longer valid, portrays Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, poet, author, and proponent of Nynorsk. This was the first Norwegian banknote featuring the Nynorsk name of Norway, the 50 kroner note may well be replaced by a 50 kroner coin in the not too distant future. The 100 kroner note portrays Kirsten Flagstad, opera singer and first director of the Norwegian National Opera, in 2003 this note was upgraded with a holographic metal foil stripe. The previous edition, no longer valid, was the first Norwegian banknote featuring a woman, Camilla Collett, author, feminist activist, sister of Henrik Wergeland, Camilla actually replaced her brother on the 100 kroner note, where he had been the motif since 1949. It portrays Kristian Birkeland, magnetism researcher, inventor, and co-founder of Norsk Hydro, in 2002 this note was upgraded with a holographic metal foil stripe. The front of the 200 kroner note shows a portrait of Kristian Birkeland against a pattern of the aurora borealis. Birkelands terrella experiment, which consisted of a small, magnetized sphere representing the Earth suspended in a box, is shown on the left. When subjected to an electron beam a glow of light would appear around the poles of the terrella. The back of the 200 kroner note shows a map of the polar regions including Scandinavia to the right. A ring encircling the magnetic dip pole symbolizes the location of auroral phenomena including the satellite-determined statistical location of Birkeland currents, birkelands original depiction of field-aligned currents published in 1908 is shown in the lower right corner
2.
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
3.
Svalbard
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Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Situated north of mainland Europe, it is midway between continental Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the range from 74° to 81° north latitude. The largest island is Spitsbergen, followed by Nordaustlandet and Edgeøya, administratively, the archipelago is not part of any Norwegian county, but forms an unincorporated area administered by a governor appointed by the Norwegian government. Since 2002, Svalbards main settlement, Longyearbyen, has had a local government. Other settlements include the Russian mining community of Barentsburg, the station of Ny-Ålesund. Svalbard is the northernmost settlement in the world with a permanent civilian population, other settlements are farther north, but are populated only by rotating groups of researchers. The islands were first taken into use as a base in the 17th and 18th centuries. Coal mining started at the beginning of the 20th century, the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 recognizes Norwegian sovereignty, and the 1925 Svalbard Act made Svalbard a full part of the Kingdom of Norway. They also established Svalbard as an economic zone and a demilitarized zone. The Norwegian Store Norske and the Russian Arktikugol remain the mining companies in place. Research and tourism have become important supplementary industries, with the University Centre in Svalbard, no roads connect the settlements, instead snowmobiles, aircraft and boats serve inter-community transport. Svalbard Airport, Longyear serves as the main gateway, the archipelago features an Arctic climate, although with significantly higher temperatures than other areas at the same latitude. The flora take advantage of the period of midnight sun to compensate for the polar night. Svalbard is a ground for many seabirds, and also features polar bears, reindeer, the Arctic fox. Seven national parks and twenty-three nature reserves cover two-thirds of the archipelago, protecting the largely untouched, yet fragile, approximately 60% of the archipelago is covered with glaciers, and the islands feature many mountains and fjords. Svalbard and Jan Mayen are collectively assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code SJ, both areas are administered by Norway, though they are separated by a distance of over 500 nautical miles and have very different administrative structures. The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 defines Svalbard as all islands, islets and skerries from 74° to 81° north latitude, the land area is 61,022 km2, and dominated by the island of Spitsbergen, which constitutes more than half the archipelago, followed by Nordaustlandet and Edgeøya
4.
Jan Mayen
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Jan Mayen is a Norwegian volcanic island situated in the North Arctic Ocean. It is 55 km long and 373 km2 in area, partly covered by glaciers and it has two parts, larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by a 2.5 km wide isthmus. It lies 600 km northeast of Iceland,500 km east of central Greenland and 1,000 km west of the North Cape, the island is mountainous, the highest summit being the Beerenberg volcano in the north. The isthmus is the location of the two largest lakes of the island, Sørlaguna, and Nordlaguna, a third lake is called Ullerenglaguna. Jan Mayen was formed by the Jan Mayen hotspot, although administered separately, Svalbard and Jan Mayen are collectively assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code SJ. Jan Mayen Island has one exploitable natural resource, gravel, from the site at Trongskaret, other than this, economic activity is limited to providing services for employees of Norways radio communications and meteorological stations located on the island. Jan Mayen has one unpaved airstrip, Jan Mayensfield, which is about 1,585 m long, the 124.1 km coast has no ports or harbours, only offshore anchorages. There are important fishing resources, and the existence of Jan Mayen establishes a large Exclusive Economic Zone around it, a dispute between Norway and Denmark regarding the fishing exclusion zone between Jan Mayen and Greenland was settled in 1988 granting Denmark the greater area of sovereignty. Significant deposits of petroleum and natural gas are suspected by geologists to lie below Jan Mayens surrounding seafloors, Jan Mayen Island is an integral part of the Kingdom of Norway. Since 1995, Jan Mayen has been administered by the County Governor of the northern Norwegian county of Nordland to which it is closest. However, some authority over Jan Mayen has been assigned to the commander of the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation. The only inhabitants on the island are personnel working for the Norwegian Armed Forces, eighteen people spend the winter on the island, but the population may double during the summer, when heavy maintenance is performed. Personnel serve either six months or one year, and are exchanged twice a year in April, the main purpose of the military personnel is to operate a Loran-C base. The support crew, including mechanics, cooks, and a nurse, are among the military personnel, both the LORAN transmitter and the meteorological station are located a few kilometres away from the settlement Olonkinbyen, where all personnel live. Transport to the island is provided by C-130 Hercules military transport planes operated by the Royal Norwegian Air Force that land at Jan Mayensfields gravel runway, the planes fly in from Bodø Main Air Station eight times a year. Since the airport does not have any instrument landing capabilities, good visibility is required, for heavy goods, freight ships visit during the summer, but since there are no harbours, the ships must anchor. The island has no population, but is assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code SJ. It uses the Internet country code top-level domain. no and data code JN, Jan Mayen has telephone and internet connection over satellite, using Norwegian telephone numbers
5.
Bouvet Island
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Bouvet Island is an uninhabited subantarctic high island and dependency of Norway located in the South Atlantic Ocean at 54°25. 8′S 3°22. 8′E. The island has an area of 49 square kilometres, of which 93 percent is covered by a glacier, the centre of the island is an ice-filled crater of an inactive volcano. Some skerries and one island, Larsøya, lie along the coast. Nyrøysa, created by a slide in the late 1950s, is the only easy place to land and is the location of a weather station. The island was first spotted on 1 January 1739 by Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, after whom it was later named and he recorded inaccurate coordinates and the island was not sighted again until 1808, when the British whaler captain James Lindsay named it Lindsay Island. The first claim of landing, although disputed, was by Benjamin Morrell, in 1825, the island was claimed for the British Crown by George Norris, who named it Liverpool Island. He also reported Thompson Island as nearby, although this was shown to be a phantom island. The first Norvegia expedition landed on the island in 1927 and claimed it for Norway, at this time the island was named Bouvet Island, or Bouvetøya in Norwegian. After a dispute with the United Kingdom, it was declared a Norwegian dependency in 1930 and it became a nature reserve in 1971. The island was discovered on 1 January 1739 by Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, commander of the French ships Aigle and this was the first time that land had been spotted south of the 50th parallel south. Bouvet, who was searching for a large southern continent, spotted the island through the fog. He was not able to land and did not circumnavigate his discovery and his plotting of its position was inaccurate, leading several expeditions to fail to find the island again. James Cooks second voyage set off from Cape Verde on 22 November 1772 to find Cape Circoncision, the next expedition to spot the island was in 1808 by James Lindsay, captain of the Samuel Enderby & Sons whaler Snow Swan. They reached the island and recorded its position, though they were unable to land, Lindsay could confirm that the cape was indeed an island. The next expedition to arrive at the island was American Benjamin Morrell, Morrell, by his own account, found the island without difficulty before landing and hunting 196 seals. In his subsequent lengthy description, Morrell does not mention the islands most obvious physical feature and this has caused some commentators to doubt whether he actually visited the island. On 10 December 1825, SE&Ss George Norris, master of the Sprightly, landed on the island, named it Liverpool Island and claimed it for the British Crown and George IV on 16 December. The next expedition to spot the island was Joseph Fuller and his ship Francis Allyn in 1893, german Carl Chuns Valdivia expedition arrived at the island in 1898
6.
Queen Maud Land
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Queen Maud Land is a c.2.7 million-square-kilometre region of Antarctica claimed as a dependent territory by Norway. The territory lies between 20° west and 45° east, between the British Antarctic Territory to the west and the Australian Antarctic Territory to the east. On most maps there had been an area between Queen Maud Lands borders of 1939 and the South Pole until June 12,2015 when Norway formally annexed that area. Positioned in East Antarctica, the territory comprises about one-fifth of the area of Antarctica. The claim is named after the Norwegian queen Maud of Wales, Norwegian Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen was the first person known to have set foot in the territory, in 1930. On 14 January 1939, the territory was claimed by Norway, from 1939 until 1945, Nazi Germany claimed New Swabia, which consisted of part of Queen Maud Land. On 23 June 1961, Queen Maud Land became part of the Antarctic Treaty System and it is one of two Antarctic claims made by Norway, the other being Peter I Island. They are administrated by the Polar Affairs Department of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice, most of the territory is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, and a tall ice wall stretches throughout its coast. In some areas further within the ice sheet, mountain ranges breach through the ice, allowing for birds to breed, the region is divided into the Princess Martha Coast, Princess Astrid Coast, Princess Ragnhild Coast, Prince Harald Coast and Prince Olav Coast. The waters off the coast are called the King Haakon VII Sea, there is no permanent population, although there are 12 active research stations housing a maximum average of 40 scientists, the numbers fluctuating depending on the season. Six are occupied year-round, while the remainder are seasonal summer stations, the territory is estimated to cover around 2,700,000 square kilometres. The limits of the claim, put forth in 1939, did not fix the northern and southern limits other than as the beach in Antarctica. With the land lies beyond this beach and the sea beyond. The sea that extends off the coast between the limits of Queen Maud Land is generally called King Haakon VII Sea. There is no land at the coast, the coast consists of a 20-to-30-metre high wall of ice throughout almost the entire territory. It is thus possible to disembark from a ship in a few places. The other major mountain ranges are the Heimefront Range, Orvin Mountains, Wohlthat Mountains, geologically, the ground of Queen Maud Land is dominated by Precambrian gneiss, formed c.1 to 1.2 Ga, before the creation of the supercontinent Gondwana. The mountains consist mostly of crystalline and granitic rocks, formed c.500 to 600 Ma in the Pan-African orogeny during the assembly of Gondwana, in the farthest western parts of the territory, there are younger sedimentary and volcanic rocks
7.
Central bank
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A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages a states currency, money supply, and interest rates. Central banks also usually oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries, Central banks in most developed nations are institutionally designed to be independent from political interference. Still, limited control by the executive and legislative bodies usually exists, prior to the 17th century most money was commodity money, typically gold or silver. However, promises to pay were widely circulated and accepted as value at least five hundred years earlier in both Europe and Asia. The Song dynasty was the first to issue generally circulating paper currency, in 1455, in an effort to control inflation, the succeeding Ming Dynasty ended the use of paper money and closed much of Chinese trade. The Bank of Amsterdam, established in the Dutch Republic in 1609, is considered to be the forerunner to modern central banks. The Wisselbanks innovations helped lay the foundations for the birth and development of the banking system that now plays a vital role in the worlds economy. Along with a number of local banks, it performed many functions of a central banking system. Lucien Gillard calls it the European guilder, and Adam Smith devotes many pages to explaining how the bank guilder works, the model of the Wisselbank as a state bank was adapted throughout Europe, including the Bank of Sweden and the Bank of England. Established by Dutch-Latvian Johan Palmstruch in 1668, Sveriges Riksbank is often considered by many as the worlds oldest central bank, the lenders would give the government cash and also issue notes against the government bonds, which could be lent again. A Royal Charter was granted on 27 July through the passage of the Tonnage Act 1694, the bank was given exclusive possession of the governments balances, and was the only limited-liability corporation allowed to issue banknotes. The £1. 2M was raised in 12 days, half of this was used to rebuild the Navy and these modern central banking functions evolved slowly through the 18th and 19th centuries. The currency crisis of 1797, caused by panicked depositors withdrawing from the Bank led to the government suspending convertibility of notes into specie payment. The bank was accused by the bullionists of causing the exchange rate to fall from over issuing banknotes. Nevertheless, it was clear that the Bank was being treated as an organ of the state, henry Thornton, a merchant banker and monetary theorist has been described as the father of the modern central bank. An opponent of the real bills doctrine, he was a defender of the bullionist position, thorntons process of monetary expansion anticipated the theories of Knut Wicksell regarding the cumulative process which restates the Quantity Theory in a theoretically coherent form. Until the mid-nineteenth century, commercial banks were able to issue their own banknotes, many consider the origins of the central bank to lie with the passage of the Bank Charter Act of 1844. Under this law, authorisation to issue new banknotes was restricted to the Bank of England, at the same time, the Bank of England was restricted to issue new banknotes only if they were 100% backed by gold or up to £14 million in government debt
8.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
9.
German occupation of Norway
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The German occupation of Norway began on 9 April 1940 after German forces invaded the neutral Scandinavian country of Norway. Conventional armed resistance to the German invasion ended on 10 June 1940, throughout this period, Norway was continuously occupied by the Wehrmacht. This period of occupation is in Norway referred to as the war years or occupation period. By the late 1930s, the Norwegian parliament had accepted the need for a military and expanded the budget accordingly. As it turned out, most of the plans enabled by the expansion were not completed in time. Although neutrality remained the highest priority until the invasion was a fait accompli, it was throughout the government that Norway, above all. By the autumn of 1939, there was a sense of urgency that Norway had to prepare, not only to protect its neutrality. Efforts to improve military readiness and capability, and to sustain an extended blockade, were intensified between September 1939 and April 1940, several incidents in Norwegian maritime waters, notably the Altmark incident in Jøssingfjord, put great strains on Norways ability to assert its neutrality. In March and April 1940, British plans for an invasion of Norway were prepared, mainly in order to reach and it was hoped that this would divert German forces away from France, and open a war front in south Sweden. It was also agreed that mines would be laid in Norwegian waters, because of Anglo-French arguments, the date of the mining was postponed from 5 April to 8 April. A major storm on 7 April resulted in the British Navy failing to make contact with the German shipping. Consistent with Blitzkrieg warfare, German forces attacked Norway by sea, the first wave of German attackers counted only about 10,000 men. In the other cities that were attacked, the Germans faced only weak or no resistance, the surprise, and the lack of preparedness of Norway for a large-scale invasion of this kind, gave the German forces their initial success. The major Norwegian ports from Oslo northward to Narvik were occupied by advance detachments of German troops, at the same time, a single parachute battalion took the Oslo and Stavanger airfields, and 800 operational aircraft overwhelmed the Norwegian population. The first troops to occupy Oslo entered the city brazenly, marching behind a German military brass band, on establishing footholds in Oslo and Trondheim, the Germans launched a ground offensive against scattered resistance inland in Norway. Allied forces attempted several counterattacks, but all failed, while resistance in Norway had little military success, it had the significant political effect of allowing the Norwegian government, including the royal family, to escape. The Blücher, which carried the main forces to occupy the capital, was sunk in the Oslofjord on the first day of the invasion, an improvised defence at Midtskogen also prevented a German raid from capturing the king and government. The Norwegian Army rallied after the confusion and on several occasions managed to put up a stiff fight
10.
Reichsmark
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The Reichsmark was subdivided into 100 Reichspfennig. The Mark is an ancient Germanic weight measure, traditionally a half pound, from 1871 to 1918 Germany was called the Kaiserreich, or the Deutsches Reich. Although Germany became a republic in 1919, the term Reich remained part of the official name. The Reichsmark was introduced in 1924 as a permanent replacement for the Papiermark and this was necessary due to the 1920s German inflation which had reached its peak in 1923. The exchange rate between the old Papiermark and the Reichsmark was 1 ℛℳ =1012 Papiermark, the Reichsmark was put on the gold standard at the rate previously used by the Goldmark, with the U. S. dollar worth 4.2 ℛℳ. As the market crash of 1929 expanded into the Great Depression and it retained a gold peg at that time. Hyper inflation ensued to the point it was cheaper to burn reichsmark paper notes than to buy fire wood, a number of companies were created with inadequate capital for their operations and authorized to issue bonds exchangeable at a 1,1 rate for Reichsmarks and sold at a discount. The Reichsbank rediscounted the bills of these companies creating a monetary expansion without formally renouncing the link to gold, Deutsche Gesellschaft für öffentliche Arbeiten AG, founded 1 August 1930, ended up issuing 1.26 billion Reichsmarks of Öffa bills to finance public construction. It formed the model for further fraudulent issues of bills. MEFO was a company that was formed with relatively small amounts of capital that was used to finance German rearmament off the books. It issued bills without backing by its own resources but which were guaranteed redeemable at 1,1 for Reichsmarks for five years by the government, the MEFO bills amounts were considered a state secret and were an important element in the impression that Hitlerian economics was a success. This company essentially created an amount of Reichsmarks off the books. With the unification of Germany and Austria in 1938, the Reichsmark replaced the Schilling in Austria. The rates were as follows, After the Second World War, the Reichsmark continued to circulate in Germany, in practice, massive inflation dating back to the latter stages of the war had rendered the Reichsmark nearly worthless. For all intents and purposes, it was supplanted by a barter economy, the Reichsmark was replaced in June 1948 by the Deutsche Mark in the Trizone and later in the same year by the East German Mark in East Germany. Tenenbaum of the US military government, and was executed abruptly on 21 June 1948, three days later, the new currency also replaced the Reichsmark in the three Western sectors of Berlin. In November 1945, the Reichsmark was superseded by the Allied Military Schilling in Austria, in 1947 a local currency was introduced in the Saar. In 1924, coins were introduced in denominations of 1,2,5,10, and 50 Reichspfennig, the 1 and 2 Reichspfennig were struck in bronze, and depicting a wheat sheaf
11.
Stave church
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A stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church building once common in north-western Europe. The name derives from the structure of post and lintel construction. Two related church building also named for their structural elements. Originally much more widespread, most of the stave churches are in Norway. Similar palisade constructions are known from buildings from the Viking Age, logs were split in two halves, set or rammed into the earth and given a roof. This proved a simple but very strong form of construction, if set in gravel, the wall could last many decades, even centuries. An archaeological excavation in Lund uncovered the postholes of several such churches, in post churches, the walls were supported by sills, leaving only the posts earth-bound. Such churches are easy to spot at archaeological sites as they leave very distinct holes where the posts were once placed, occasionally some of the wood remains, making it possible to date the church more accurately using radiocarbon dating and/or with dendrochronology. Under the Urnes stave church, remains have been found of two churches, with Christian graves discovered beneath the oldest church structure. A single church of palisade construction has been discovered under the Hemse stave church, the next design phase resulted from the observation that earthbound posts were susceptible to humidity, causing them to rot away over time. To prevent this, the posts were placed on top of large stones, the stave church in Røldal is believed to be of this type. In still later churches, the posts were set on a raised sill frame resting on stone foundations and this is the stave church in its most mature form. Those with the roof, Type B, are often further divided into two subgroups. The first of these, the Kaupanger group, have a whole row of posts and intermediate posts along the sides. These churches give an impression of a basilica, the other subgroup is the Borgund group. In these churches the post are connected halfway up one or two horizontal double ″pincer beams″ with semicircular indentations, clasping the row of posts from both sides. Cross-braces are inserted between the posts and the upper and lower beams, forming a very rigid interconnection. This design made it possible to omit the lower part of intermediate posts
12.
Viking ships
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Viking ships were marine vessels of unique design, built by the Vikings during the Viking Age. The boat-types were quite varied, depending on what the ship was intended for and they were clinker built, which is the overlapping of planks riveted together. Some might have had a head or other circular object protruding from the bow and stern, for design. Viking ships were not just used for their military prowess but for long-distance trade, in the literature, Viking ships are usually seen divided into two broad categories, merchant ships and warships. These categories are overlapping, some kinds of merchant ships, built for transporting cargo specifically, were regularly deployed as warships. The majority of Viking ships were designed for sailing rivers, fjords and coastal waters, while a few types, such as the knarr, could navigate the open sea and even the ocean. The Viking ships ranged from the Baltic Sea to far from the Scandinavian homelands, to Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Newfoundland, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Africa. Scandinavia is a region with relatively high mountain ranges, dense forests. Consequently, trade routes were operated via shipping, as inland travel was both more hazardous and cumbersome. The Viking kingdoms developed into cities, all of which were deeply dependent on the North Sea. Control of the waterways was of importance, and consequently advanced war ships were in high demand. But in fact, because of their importance, ships became a mainstay of the Viking pagan religion, as they evolved into symbols of power. Throughout the first millennium, respectable Viking chieftains and noblemen were commonly buried with an intact, furthermore, the Hedeby coins, among the earliest known Danish currency, have ships as emblems, showing the importance of naval vessels in the area. Through such cultural and practical significance, the Viking ship progressed into the most powerful, a faering is an open rowboat with two pairs of oars, commonly found in most boat-building traditions in Western and Northern Scandinavia, dating back to the Viking Age. Knarr is the Norse term for ships that were built for Atlantic voyages and they were cargo ships averaging a length of about 54 feet, a beam of 15 feet, and a hull capable of carrying up to 122 tons. Because of this, the knarr was used for longer voyages, ocean going transports, the design of the knarr later influenced the design of the cog, used in the Baltic Sea by the Hanseatic League. Longships were naval vessels made and used by the Vikings from Scandinavia and Iceland for trade, commerce, exploration, and warfare during the Viking Age. The longships design evolved over years, beginning in the Stone Age with the invention of the umiak and continuing up to the 9th century with the Nydam
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