Norway: Regions, Cities & Travel Guide

What is Norway known for?

Long arms of the sea reach far inland between steep walls, threading past great valleys, wide forests, and lakes that fill the hollows the ice left behind. Oslo and Bergen anchor the lived-in south. North of them the land thins and rises into the Arctic, where the midnight sun burns through the short summer nights and the Northern Lights wheel over the dark of winter, drawing travellers up the Norwegian Sea coast toward the far island of Svalbard.

Where is Norway?

Norway holds the western and northernmost reach of the Scandinavian Peninsula in northern Europe. The land is a long, narrow strip wrung out along the coast, its interior a tangle of great valleys, wide forests, and lakes between bare uplands, while the sea works the whole western edge into the deep fjords the country is named for. Mountains run its length.

High ground forms a watershed close to the coast, so rivers and valleys fall steeply west to the fjords and more gently east toward Sweden, which shares Norway's long eastern border. Open water faces the country on every side. The Skagerrak strait washes the far south, the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea run up the western flank, and the Barents Sea closes the Arctic top, where Finland and Russia meet Norway at the northeastern corner.

Far out lie the outliers. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard belong to the kingdom, carrying it well into polar waters beyond the mainland's northern cape.

What is the history of Norway?

The crown is old, the borders modern. From the fjords and valleys of the Scandinavian Peninsula the early Norse put to sea as Vikings, ranging across the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea and binding the scattered coastal districts under a single line of kings. The realm then spent long centuries inside larger unions.

Norway was joined first to Denmark and afterward to Sweden, and through those years its language, law, and seafaring trade carried on along the same coast while the capital shifted and the throne lay elsewhere. Independence came late and by separation. The kingdom of Norway took its present sovereign shape in 1905, when the union with Sweden was dissolved and a constitutional monarchy was settled with Oslo as capital.

The sea kept its grip on the country's fortunes. Fishing along the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea, timber from the forests, and later the petroleum drawn from beneath the North Sea built a wealthy modern nation, one whose reach still runs north past the mainland to Svalbard and the lonely island of Jan Mayen.

What is Norway like?

Norwegian life grows out of the fjords and the long coast. For centuries the great valleys kept districts apart while the sea joined them, breeding a culture that is close to its weather, fond of the outdoors, and tied to fishing, timber, and the slow work of farming steep ground. The language is Norwegian.

It carries the old district dialects that the valleys preserved, and it reaches from Oslo in the populous south up the Norwegian Sea coast to the Arctic edge where the midnight sun and the Northern Lights mark the turning year. The far north shapes the national imagination as much as the cities do. Oslo and Bergen hold the museums, the music, and the trade, yet the country looks outward to its wild rim, to Svalbard and Jan Mayen in the polar dark and to the open water of the Barents Sea.

Custom keeps the old ways near. Skiing, hiking, and the cabin in the forest run through ordinary life, and the same fjords, valleys, and lakes that divided the early kingdom now bind a single modern nation along the western Scandinavian Peninsula.

What is the climate of Norway?

Norway holds a temperate, maritime climate that the long coast keeps milder than its northern reach would suggest. The North Sea and the Norwegian Sea push warm Atlantic water up the western fjords, so the coast stays wet and grey rather than frozen, while the great valleys and uplands inland run colder and drier behind the mountain wall. The far north is another world.

Beyond the Arctic edge the midnight sun holds off the summer dark and the long polar night falls in winter over the Barents Sea, lengthening every season toward the extremes of light and shadow.

How do you get to Norway?

Most arrive through Oslo. The capital's airport and rail lines make the busiest gateway into the country, sitting at the head of its long fjord, while Bergen on the western coast adds a second air and sea entry that opens the fjord routes. Overland the long eastern border carries road and rail in from Sweden, with quieter Arctic crossings from Finland and Russia in the far northeast.

Boats finish the journey. Ferries and coastal ships thread up the Norwegian Sea between the fjord towns and run out across the North Sea to the Continent.