Norway Travel Guide 2026

Historical Heritage

Norway's history is one of the most dramatic in Europe — a small seafaring nation that punched far above its weight for a thousand years. The Viking Age (793–1066 AD) transformed Scandinavia from peripheral backwater to the dominant force in Northern and Western Europe — Norwegian Vikings raided and settled Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, and famously reached North America 500 years before Columbus, establishing the L'Anse aux Meadows settlement in Newfoundland around 1000 AD. Harald Fairhair unified Norway around 872 AD. The country was Christianised by the end of the 10th century. Norway's union with Denmark (1397–1814 under the Kalmar and later Danish Union) and subsequent union with Sweden (1814–1905) were periods of cultural suppression and political subordination. The peaceful dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union in 1905 — a referendum in which only 184 Norwegians voted to maintain the union — created the modern Kingdom of Norway under King Haakon VII. Norway discovered the massive Ekofisk oil field in the North Sea in 1969, and subsequent oil revenues — channelled into the Government Pension Fund of Norway (now worth $1.4 trillion, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund) — transformed the country into one of the world's wealthiest per capita. Norway's human development index consistently ranks it first in the world. WWII occupation by Nazi Germany (1940–45), Norwegian resistance, and the flight of the royal family to London are defining national memories. Norway voted against EU membership in 1994, preferring its independent oil prosperity.