Norway

A country that spent five hundred years inside other people's kingdoms and then found oil. Norwegian Vikings reached Iceland, Greenland and North America, and Harald Fairhair unified the kingdom around 872. The Black Death killed perhaps half the population and broke the aristocracy, after which Norway entered union with Denmark for four centuries - a period Norwegian historians long called the four-hundred-year night - and was handed to Sweden in 1814 as compensation for Danish support of Napoleon. Norwegians responded by writing a constitution at Eidsvoll that year, still in force and among the oldest anywhere, and dissolved the Swedish union peacefully in 1905. Fishing, shipping and hydroelectricity built the economy. Germany invaded in 1940 and occupied the country for five years under Quisling, whose name became a common noun. North Sea oil found in 1969 was placed under state control and its revenue put into a sovereign fund now worth well over a trillion dollars, the largest in the world - a deliberate decision not to spend it. Norway has twice voted against joining the European Union. The Nobel peace prize is awarded in Oslo. The country has about 5.5 million people along a coastline whose fjords make it one of the longest in the world. Norwegian has two official written standards, Bokmal and Nynorsk. Svalbard, far to the north, is Norwegian under a treaty allowing other signatories to operate there. The country generates almost all its electricity from hydropower. Most new cars sold are now electric, a higher share than anywhere else. The midnight sun and polar night are both features of life above the Arctic Circle.

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