Contexts
HISTORY
For much of its early history, Norway punched well above its international weight. By the tenth century its people had explored – and conquered – much of northern Europe, and roamed the Atlantic as far as the North American mainland. Yet these heady days came to an end when Norway lost its independence in the fourteenth century, coming under the sway of first Denmark and then Sweden: the country then became isolated and poor in equal measure. Independent again from 1905, Norway was propelled into World War II by the German invasion of 1940, an act of aggression that transformed the Norwegians’ attitude to the outside world. Gone was the old insularity, replaced by a liberal internationalism exemplified by Norway’s leading role in the environmental movement. And then came the money – or rather the oil: since its discovery in the late 1960s, Norway’s North Sea oil has made it one of the wealthiest countries in Europe.
Early civilizations
The earliest signs of human habitation in Norway date from the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 BC. In the Finnmark region of north Norway, the Komsa culture was reliant upon sealing, whereas the peoples of the Fosna culture, further south near present-day Kristiansund, hunted both seals and reindeer. Both these societies were essentially static, dependent upon flint and bone implements. At Alta, the Komsa people left behind hundreds of rock carvings and drawings, naturalistic representations of their way of life dating from the seventh to the third millennium BC.
As the edges of the ice cap retreated from the western coastline, so new migrants slowly filtered north. These new peoples, of the Nøstvet-økser culture, were also hunters and fishers, but they were able to manufacture stone axes, examples of which were first unearthed at Nøstvet, near Oslo. Beginning around 2700 BC, immigrants from the east, principally the semi-nomadic Boat Axe and Battle-Axe peoples – so named because of the distinctive shape of their stone weapons/tools – introduced animal husbandry and agriculture. The new arrivals did not, however, overwhelm their predecessors; the two groups coexisted, each picking up hints from the other – a reflection of the harsh infertility of the land.
Into the Bronze Age
These late Stone Age cultures flourished at a time when other, more southerly countries were already using metal. Norway was poor and had little to trade, but the Danes and Swedes exchanged amber for copper and tin from the bronze-making countries of central Europe. A fraction of the imported bronze subsequently passed into Norway, mostly to the Battle-Axe people, who appear to have had a comparatively prosperous aristocracy. This was the beginning of the Norwegian Bronze Age (1500–500 BC), which also saw a change in burial customs. In the Stone Age, the Battle-Axe peoples had dug shallow earth graves, but these were now supplanted by burial mounds enclosing coffins in which supplies were placed in readiness for the afterlife. Building the mounds involved a substantial amount of effort, suggesting the existence of powerful chieftains who could organize the work, and who may also have been priests. Rock carvings became prevalent in southern Norway during this period too – workaday images of men ploughing with oxen, riding horses, carrying arms and using boats to navigate the coastal waters, which were supplemented by drawings of religious or symbolic significance. In general terms, however, the Bronze Age was characterized more by the development of agriculture than by the use of metal, and stone implements remained the norm.
500 BC to 200 AD
Around 500 BC Norway was affected by two adverse changes: the climate deteriorated, and trade with the Mediterranean was disrupted by the westward movement of the Celts across central Europe. The former encouraged the development of settled, communal farming in an attempt to improve winter shelter and storage, with each clan resident in a large stone, turf and timber dwelling; the latter cut the supply of tin and copper and subsequently isolated Norway from the early Iron Age. The country’s isolation continued through much of the Classical period. The Greek geographer Pytheas of Marseilles, who went far enough north to note the short summer nights, probably visited southern Norway, but the regions beyond remained the subject of vague speculation. Pliny the Elder mentions “Nerigon” as the great island south of the legendary “Ultima Thule”, the outermost region of the earth, while Tacitus, in his Germania, demonstrated knowledge only of the Danes and Swedes.
The expansion of the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries AD revived Norway’s trading links with the Mediterranean. Evidence of these renewed contacts is provided across Scandinavia by runes, carved inscriptions dating from around 200 AD, whose 24-letter alphabet – the futhark – was clearly influenced by Greek and Latin capitals. Initially, runes were seen as having magical powers and it was to gain their knowledge that the god Odin hung for nine nights on Yggdrasill, the tree of life, with a spear in his side; they also turn up in the sagas with Egil, in Egil’s Saga for instance, destroying a whale bone carved with runes because they contained “Ten secret characters, [which] gave the young girl [the daughter of his friend] her grinding pain.” But gradually rune usage became more prosaic, and most of the eight hundred or so runic inscriptions extant across southern Norway commemorate events and individuals: mothers and fathers, sons and slain comrades.
The Norwegian Iron Age and early medieval Norway
The renewal of trade with the Mediterranean also spread the use of iron. Norway’s agriculture was transformed by the use of iron tools, and the pace of change accelerated in the fifth century AD, when the Norwegians learned how to smelt the brown iron ore, limonite, that lay in their bogs and lakes – hence its common name, bog-iron. Clearing the forests with iron axes was relatively easy and, with more land available, the pattern of settlement became less concentrated. Family homesteads leapfrogged up the valleys, and a class of wealthy farmers emerged, their prosperity based on fields and flocks. Above them in the pecking order were local chieftains, the nature of whose authority varied considerably. Inland, the chieftains’ power was based on landed wealth and constrained by feudal responsibilities, whereas the coastal lords, who had often accumulated influence from trade, piracy and military prowess, were less encumbered. Like the farmers, these seafarers had also benefited from the iron axe, which made boat building much easier. An early seventh-century ship found at Kvalsund, near Hammerfest, was 18m long, its skilfully crafted oak hull equipped with a high prow and stern, prefiguring the vessels of the Vikings.
By the middle of the eighth century, Norway had become a country of small, independent kingships, its geography impeding the development of any central authority. In the event, it was the Yngling chieftains of southeast Norway who attempted to assert some sort of wider control. Their first leaders are listed in the Ynglinga Tal, a paean compiled by the Norwegian skald (court poet) Thjodolf in the ninth century. According to Thjodolf, early royal life had its ups and downs: King Domaldi was sacrificed to ensure the fertility of his land; Dag was killed by an accidental blow from a pitchfork; and Fjolnir got up in the night to take a leak, fell into a vat of mead and drowned.
The Vikings
Overpopulation, clan discord, and the lure of plunder and commerce all contributed to the sudden explosion that launched the Vikings (from the Norse word vik, meaning creek, and -ing, frequenter of), upon an unsuspecting Europe in the ninth century. The patterns of attack and eventual settlement were dictated by the geographical position of the various Scandinavian countries. The Swedish Vikings turned eastwards, the Danes headed south and southwest, while the Norwegians sailed west, their longships landing on the Hebrides, Shetland, Orkney, the Scottish mainland and western Ireland. The Pictish population was unable to muster much resistance and the islands were quickly overrun, becoming, together with the Isle of Man, the nucleus of a new Norse kingdom that provided a base for further attacks on Scotland and Ireland.
The Norwegians founded Dublin in 836, and from Ireland turned their attention eastward to northern Britain. Elsewhere, Norwegian Vikings settled the Faroe Islands and Iceland, and even raided as far south as Moorish Spain, attacking Seville in 844. The raiders soon became settlers, sometimes colonizing the entire country – as in Iceland and the Faroes – but mostly intermingling with the local population. The speed of their assimilation is, in fact, one of the Vikings’ most striking features: William the Conqueror (1027–87) was the epitome of the Norman baron, yet he was also the descendant of Rollo, the Viking warrior whose army had overrun Normandy just a century before.
The whole of Norway felt the stimulating effects of the Viking expeditions. The economy was boosted by the spoils of war and the population grew in physical stature as health and nutrition improved. Farmland was no longer in such short supply; cereal and dairy farming were extended into new areas in eastern Norway; new vegetables, such as cabbages and turnips, were introduced from Britain; and farming methods were improved by overseas contact – the Celts, for instance, taught the Norwegians how to thresh grain with flails.
VIKING JEWELLERY
The Vikings were particularly keen on jewellery, both as a form of adornment and as a way of showing their wealth. Silver was the primary metal of value, as gold was in desperately short supply and only used by the most privileged. The early Vikings were quite content to wear imported – or indeed looted – jewellery of pretty much any description, but by the tenth century it was the silver- and goldsmiths back home who produced the most valued pieces, decorated with a densely wrought filigree of abstract patterns. Viking gold- and silver-work is categorized into several different periods, beginning with the intricate Oseberg and Borre styles of the ninth century and culminating in the more sophisticated Jellinge and Urnes styles of the tenth. However, only the wealthier Vikings could afford gold and silver and most had to make do with bronze jewellery, which was mass-produced in clay moulds. The most common items were bracelets and brooches, armlets and buckles, neck rings and pendants; earrings were unknown and finger rings rare. The two finest collections of surviving Viking silver-work are in Oslo – at the Kulturhistorisk Museum, and at the Vikingskipshuset.
Alfred the Great and Ottar
The Vikings also rigorously exploited the hunting and fishing peoples who roamed the far north of Norway. Detailed information on Finnmark in the late ninth century comes from a surprising source, the court of Alfred the Great, which was visited by a Norwegian chieftain named Ottar in about 890. Ottar dwelt, so he claimed, “northernmost of all Norsemen”, and he regaled Alfred with tales of his native land, which the king promptly incorporated within his translation of a fifth-century Latin text, the History of the World by Paulus Orosius. Ottar, who boasted that he owed political allegiance to no one, had a few cows, sheep and pigs and a tiny slice of arable land, which he ploughed with horses, but his real wealth came from other sources. Fishing, whaling and walrus hunting provided both food for his retinue and exportable commodities. He also possessed a herd of six hundred tame reindeer – plus six decoy animals used to snare wild reindeer – and extracted a heavy tribute from the Sámi, payable in furs and hides.
Viking religion and art
The Vikings’ brand of paganism, with its wayward, unscrupulous deities, underpinned their inclination to vendettas and clan warfare. Nevertheless, institutions slowly developed which helped regulate the blood-letting. Western Norway adopted the Germanic wergeld system of cash-for-injury compensation; every free man was entitled to attend the local Thing (Ting) or parliament, while a regional Allthing made laws and settled disputes. Justice was class-based, however, with society divided into three main categories: the lord, the freeman, and the thrall or slave, who was worth about eight cows. The Vikings were industrious slavers, opening slave markets wherever they went, sending thousands to work on their land back home and supplying the needs of other buyers.
Viking decorative art was also pan-Scandinavian, with the most distinguished work being the elaborate and often grotesque animal motifs that adorned their ships, sledges, buildings and furniture. This craftsmanship is seen to good advantage in the ship burials of Oseberg and Gokstad, the retrieved artefacts which are on display in Oslo’s Viking Ships Museum. The Oseberg ship is thought to be the burial ship of Åse, wife of the early ninth-century Yngling king, Gudrød Storlatnes. She was also the mother of Halfdan the Black, whose body had a very different fate from her own – it was chopped up, and the bits were buried across his kingdom to ensure the fertility of the land.
Norway’s first kings
It was from the Ynglings of Vestfold that Norway’s first widely recognized king, Harald Hårfagre (Fair-Hair; c.880–930), claimed descent. Shortly before 900 (the exact date is unclear), Harald won a decisive victory at Hafrsfjord (near modern Stavanger), which gave him control of the coastal region as far north as Trøndelag. It sparked an exodus of minor rulers, most of whom left to settle in Iceland. The thirteenth-century Laxdaela Saga records the departure of one such family, the Ketils of Romsdal, who would not be “forced to become Harald’s vassals or be denied compensation for fallen kinsmen”. Harald’s long rule was based on personal pledges of fealty and, with the notable exception of the regional Allthings, there were no institutions to sustain it; consequently, when he died, Harald’s kingdom broke up into its component parts. Harald did, however, leave a less tangible but extremely important legacy: from now on every ambitious chieftain was not content to be a local lord, but strove to be ruler of a kingdom stretching from the Trøndelag to Vestfold.
Harald’s son, Erik Bloodaxe (d.954), struggled to hold his father’s kingdom together, but was outmanoeuvred by his youngest brother, Håkon the Good (920–60), who secured the allegiance of the major chieftains before returning home from England where he had been raised (and Christianized) at the court of King Athelstan of Wessex. Erik fled to Northumbria to become king of Viking York. Initially, Håkon was well received, and, although his attempts to introduce Christianity failed, he did carry out a number of far-ranging reforms. He established a common legal code for the whole of Vestfold and Trøndelag, and also introduced the system of Leidangr, the division of the coastal districts into areas, each of which was responsible for maintaining and manning a warship.
Harald Greycloak Eriksson and Håkon Sigurdsson
Håkon’s rule was, however, punctuated by struggles against Erik’s heirs, who – with the backing of the Danish king Harald Bluetooth – defeated and killed Håkon in battle in 960. Håkon’s kingdom then passed to one of Erik’s sons, Harald Greycloak Eriksson (935–70). This forceful man set about extending his territories with gusto. Indeed, he was, in Bluetooth’s opinion, much too successful; keen to keep Norway within his sphere of influence, the Dane slaughtered Greycloak on the battlefield in 970 and replaced him with a Danish appointee, Håkon Sigurdsson (d.995), the last genuine heathen to rule Norway. But again Bluetooth seems to have got more than he bargained for. Sigurdsson based himself in Trøndelag, a decent distance from his overlord, and it’s believed he soon refused to recognize Danish suzerainty: certainly the Christian Bluetooth would not have sanctioned Sigurdsson’s restitution of pagan sacred sites.
Olav Tryggvason
In 995 the redoubtable Olav Tryggvason (c.968-1000), another Viking chieftain who had been baptized in England, sailed to Norway to challenge Sigurdsson, who was conveniently dispatched by one of his own servants before the fighting started. Olav quickly asserted control over the Trøndelag and parts of southern and western Norway. He founded Nidaros (now Trondheim), from where he launched a sustained and brutal campaign against his pagan compatriots – which incidentally secured him the adulation of later saga-writers. Despite his evangelical zeal, Olav’s religious beliefs are something of an enigma: he had pagan magicians in his personal retinue, and was so good at predicting the future from bird bones that he was called Craccaben (Crowbone). Olav’s real problem remained the enmity of the Danish-controlled southeastern regions of Norway, and of Bluetooth’s son Svein Forkbeard (d.1014), who regarded Norway as his rightful inheritance. In alliance with the Swedish king, Svein defeated Olav at a sea battle in the Skaggerak in 1000, and Norway was divided up among the victors.
West across the Atlantic
Meanwhile, amid all these dynastic shenanigans, Norwegian settlers were laying the foundations of independent Norse communities in the Faroes and Iceland, where they established a parliament, the Allthing, in 930. The Norwegian Vikings went on to make further discoveries: Erik the Red, exiled from Norway and then banished from Iceland for three years for murder, set out in 985 with 25 ships, fourteen of which arrived in Greenland. The new colony prospered, and by the start of the eleventh century there were about three thousand settlers. This created a shortage of good farmland, making another push west inevitable. The two Vinland Sagas provide the only surviving account of these further explorations, recounting the exploits of Leif Eriksson the Lucky, who founded a colony he called Vinland on the shores of North America around 1000 AD.
Norse settlers continued to secure resources from Vinland for the next few decades, until the native population drove them out. The Viking site discovered at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland may have been either Vinland itself or the result of one of these further foragings. The Greenland colonists carried on collecting timber from Labrador up until the fourteenth century, when the climate is known to have cooled and deteriorated, making the sea trip too dangerous. Attacks by the Inuit and the difficulties of maintaining trading links with Norway then took their toll on the main Greenland colonies. All contact with the outside world was lost in around 1410, and the last of the half-starved, disease-ridden survivors died out towards the end of the fifteenth century, just as Christopher Columbus was eyeing up his “New World”.
The arrival of Christianity
In 1015, Olav Haraldsson (995–1030), a prominent Viking chieftain, sailed for Norway from England, intent upon conquering his homeland. Significantly, he arrived by merchant ship with just 100 men, rather than with a fleet of longships and an army, a clear sign of the passing of the Viking heyday. He gained the support of the yeoman farmers of the interior – a new force in Norway that was rapidly supplanting the old warrior aristocracy – and with Svein Forkbeard’s son and successor Knut (King Canute of England) otherwise engaged, Haraldsson soon assumed the mantle of king of much of the country.
For twelve years Olav ruled in peace, founding Norway’s first national government. His authority was based on the regional Things – consultative and broadly democratic bodies which administered local law – and on his willingness to deliver justice without fear or favour. The king’s most enduring achievement, however, was to make Norway Christian. Olav had been converted during his days as a Viking, and vigorously imposed his new faith on his countrymen. Wherever necessary he executed persistent heathens and destroyed their sacred places. The dominant position of the new religion was ensured by the foundation of the Norwegian Church, whose first priests were consecrated in Bremen in Germany.
Olav’s death and Magnus the Good
It was foreign policy rather than pagan enmity that brought about Olav’s downfall. By scheming with the Swedish king against Knut (d.1035), who had now consolidated his position as king of Denmark and England, Olav provoked a Danish invasion, whose course was smoothed by massive bribes. The Norwegian chieftains, who had suffered at the hands of Olav, could be expected to help Knut, but even the yeomen failed to rally to Olav’s cause, possibly alienated by his imperious ways. In 1028, Olav was forced to flee, first to Sweden and then to Russia, while Knut’s young son Svein and his mother, the English queen Aelfgifu, took the Norwegian crown. Two years later, Olav made a sensational return at the head of a scratch army, only to be defeated and killed by an alliance of wealthy landowners and chieftains at Stiklestad, the first major Norwegian land battle.
The petty chieftains and yeoman farmers who had opposed Olav soon fell out with their new king: Svein had no intention of relaxing the royal grip and his rule was at least as arbitrary as that of his predecessor. The rebellion that ensued seems also to have had nationalistic undertones – many Norwegians had no wish to be ruled by a Dane. Svein fled the country, and Olav’s old enemies popped over to Sweden to bring back Olav’s young son, Magnus the Good (1024–47), who became king in 1035.
The chastening experience of Svein’s short rule transformed the popular memory of Olav. With surprising speed, he came to be regarded as a heroic champion, and there was talk of miracles brought about by the dead king’s body. The Norwegian Church, looking for a local saint to enhance its position, fostered the legends and had Olav canonized. The remains of St Olav were then re-interred ceremoniously at Nidaros, today’s Trondheim, where the miracles increased in scope, hastening the conversion of what remained of heathen Norway.
Harald Hardrada
On Magnus’s death in 1047, Harald Hardrada (1015–66), Olav Haraldsson’s half-brother, became king, and soon consolidated his grip on the whole of Norway from the Trøndelag to the Oslofjord. The last of the Viking heroes, Hardrada was a giant of a man, reputedly almost seven feet tall with a sweeping moustache and eccentric eyebrows. He had fought alongside Olav at Stiklestad and, after the battle, he and his men had fled east, fighting as mercenaries in Russia and ultimately Byzantium, where Hardrada was appointed the commander of the Varangians, the Norse bodyguard of the Byzantine emperor.
Back in Norway, Harald dominated the country by force of arms for over twenty years, earning the soubriquet “Hardrada” (the Hard) for his ruthless treatment of his enemies, many of whom he made “kiss the thin lips of the axe” as the saga writers put it. Neither was Hardrada satisfied with being king of just Norway. At first he tried to batter Denmark into submission through regular raiding, but the stratagem failed and he finally made peace with the Danish king, Svein, in 1064.
In 1066, the death of Edward the Confessor presented Harald with an opportunity to press his claim to the English throne. The Norwegian promptly sailed on England, landing near York with a massive fleet, but just outside the city, at Stamford Bridge, his army was surprised and trounced by Harold Godwinson, the new Saxon king of England. It was a battle of crucial importance, and one that gave rise to all sorts of legends, penned by both Norse and English writers. The two kings are supposed to have eyed each other up like prize fighters, with Hardrada proclaiming his rival “a small king, but one that stood well in his stirrups”, and Harold promising the Norwegian “seven feet of English ground, or as much more as he is taller than other men”. Hardrada was defeated and killed, and the threat of a Norwegian conquest of England had – though no one realized it at the time – gone forever. Not that the victory did much good for Godwinson, whose weakened army trudged back south to be defeated by William of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings.
Medieval consolidation
After the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the life of Harald Hardrada’s son, Olav Kyrre (the Peaceful; d.1093), was spared on condition that he never attacked England again. He kept his promise and went on to reign as king of Norway for the next 25 years. Peace engendered economic prosperity, and treaties with Denmark ensured Norwegian independence. Three native bishoprics were established, and cathedrals built at Nidaros, Bergen and Oslo. It’s from this period, too, that Norway’s surviving stave churches date: wooden structures resembling an upturned keel, they were lavishly decorated with dragon heads and scenes from Norse mythology, proof that the traditions of the pagan world were slow to disappear.
The first decades of the twelfth century witnessed the further consolidation of Norway’s position as an independent power, despite internal disorder as the descendants of Olav Kyrre competed for influence. Civil war ceased only when Håkon IV (1204–63) took the throne in 1240, ushering in what is often called “The Period of Greatness”. Secure at home, Håkon strengthened the Norwegian hold on the Faroe and Shetland islands, and in 1262 both Iceland and Greenland accepted Norwegian sovereignty. A year later, however, the king died in the Orkneys during a campaign to assert his control over the Hebrides, and three years later the Hebrides and the Isle of Man (always the weakest links in the Norwegian empire) were sold to the Scottish Crown by Håkon’s successor, Magnus the Lawmender (1238–80).
Under Magnus, Norway prospered. Law and order were maintained, trade flourished and, in striking contrast to the rough-and-ready ways of Hardrada, the king’s court even followed a code of etiquette compiled in what became known as the Konungs skuggsja or “King’s Mirror”. Neither was the power of the monarchy threatened by feudal barons as elsewhere in thirteenth-century Europe: Norway’s scattered farms were not susceptible to feudal tutelage and, as a consequence, the nobility lacked both local autonomy and resources. Castles remained few and far between and instead the energies of the nobility were drawn into the centralized administration of the state, a process that only happened several centuries later in the rest of western Europe. Norwegian Gothic art reached its full maturity in this period, as construction began on the nave at Nidaros Cathedral and on Håkon’s Hall in Bergen.
Magnus was succeeded by his sons, first the undistinguished Erik and then Håkon V (1270–1319), the last of medieval Norway’s talented kings. Håkon continued the policy of his predecessors, making further improvements to central government and asserting royal control of Finnmark through the construction of a fortress at Vardø. His achievements, however, were soon to be swept away along with the independence of Norway itself.
Loss of sovereignty
Norway’s independence was threatened from two quarters. With strongholds in Bergen and Oslo, the merchants of the Hanseatic League had steadily increased their influence, exerting a virtual monopoly on the region’s imports and controlling inland trade. They also came to exercise undue influence on the royal household, which grew dependent on the taxes the merchants paid. The second threat was dynastic. When Håkon died in 1319 he left no male heir and was succeeded by his grandson, the 3-year-old son of a Swedish duke. The boy, Magnus Eriksson (1316–74), was elected Swedish king two months later, marking the virtual end of Norway as an independent country until 1905.
Magnus assumed full power over both countries in 1332, but his reign was a difficult one. When the Norwegian nobility rebelled he agreed that the monarchy should again be split: his 3-year-old son, Håkon, would become Norwegian king (as Håkon VI) when he came of age, while the Swedes agreed to elect his eldest son Erik to the Swedish throne. It was then, in 1349, that the Black Death struck, spreading quickly along the coast and up the valleys, killing almost two-thirds of the Norwegian population. It was a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, its effects compounded by the way the country’s agriculture was structured. Animal husbandry was easily the most important part of Norwegian farming, and harvesting and drying winter fodder was labour-intensive. Without the labourers, the animals died in their hundreds and famine conditions prevailed for several generations.
Many farms were abandoned and, deprived of their rents, the petty chieftains who had once dominated rural Norway were, as a class, almost entirely swept away. The vacuum was filled by royal officials, the syslemenn, each of whom exercised control over a large chunk of territory on behalf of a Royal Council. The collapse of local governance was compounded by dynastic toing and froing at the top of the social ladder. In 1380, Håkon VI died and Norway passed into Danish control with Olav, the son of Håkon and the Danish princess Margaret, becoming ruler of the two kingdoms.
The Kalmar Union
Despite Olav’s early death in 1387, the resourceful Margaret persevered with the union. Proclaimed regent by both the Danish and (what remained of the) Norwegian nobility, she engineered a treaty with the Swedish nobles that not only recognized her as regent of Sweden but also agreed to accept any king she should nominate. Her chosen heir, Erik of Pomerania (1382–1459), was foisted on the Norwegians in 1389. When he reached the age of majority in 1397, Margaret organized a grand coronation with Erik crowned king of all three countries at Kalmar in Sweden – hence the Kalmar Union.
After Margaret’s death in 1412, all power was concentrated in Denmark. In Norway, foreigners were preferred in both state and church, and the country became impoverished by the taxes levied to pay for Erik’s various wars. Incompetent and brutal in equal measure, Erik managed to get himself deposed in all three countries at the same time, ending his days as a Baltic pirate.
Union with Denmark
The Kalmar Union was to struggle on until 1523, but long before that it was wracked by dynastic conflict with one or other of Sweden and Denmark trying to break out. The big turning point for Norway came in 1450, when a Danish count, Christian of Oldenburg, was crowned king of Norway and Denmark (but not Sweden) after lengthy negotiations between the Swedes and the Danes, neither of whom bothered to consult the Norwegians. Thereafter, Norway simply ceased to take any meaningful part in Scandinavian affairs. Successive monarchs continued to appoint foreigners to important positions, appropriating Norwegian funds for Danish purposes and even mortgaging Orkney and Shetland in 1469 to the Scots. Danish became the official tongue, replacing Old Norse, which came to be regarded as the language of the ignorant and inconsequential. Of local institutions, only the Norwegian Church retained any power, though this was soon to be squashed by the Reformation, and only once did it look as if Norway might break the Danish stranglehold. This was in 1501, when a Swedish-Norwegian nobleman, Knut Alvsson, crossed the border and overran southern Norway, but the Danes rallied and Alvsson was treacherously murdered as he sued for peace.
The Danish victor, King Christian II (1481–1559), imposed a crash programme of “Danicization” on the Norwegians and mercilessly hunted down his opponents, but his attempts to dominate the Swedes led to his forced abdication in 1523. The leaders of the Norwegian opposition coalesced under the archbishop of Nidaros, Olav Engelbrektsson, but their attempt to gain terms from the new king Frederik I failed. The Danish civil war that followed the death of Frederik resulted in the victory of the Protestant Christian III (1503–59) and the loss of Norway’s last independent national institution, the Catholic Church. In 1536 Christian III declared that Norway should cease to be a separate country and that the Lutheran creed should be established there. Christian even carted the silver casket that had contained the bones of St Olav back to Copenhagen, where he melted it down into coins.
Thereafter, Norway became, to all intents and purposes, simply a source of raw materials – fish, timber and iron ore – whose proceeds lined the Danish royal purse. Naturally enough, the Swedes coveted these materials too, the upshot being a long and inconclusive war (1563–70), which saw much of Norway ravaged by competing bands of mercenaries. Ironically, the Swedish attempt to capture Norway induced a change of attitude in Copenhagen: keen to keep their subjects happy, a degree of decentralization became the order of the day, and the Danes appointed a Governor-General (Stattholder) to administer justice in accordance with traditional Norwegian law.
The Reformation
Though slow to take root among the Norwegian peasantry, Lutheranism served as a powerful instrument in establishing Danish control. The Bible, catechism and hymnal were all in Danish and the bishops were all Danes too. Thus, the Norwegian Reformation was very much an instrument of Danish colonization rather than a reflection of widespread intellectual ferment: the urban apprentices and craftsmen who fired the movement elsewhere in Europe simply didn’t exist in significant numbers here in rustic Norway. Neither had the Renaissance made much impact here: the first printing press wasn’t established in Norway until 1643, and the reading public remained minuscule. However, the country did manage to produce a surprising number of humanist writers and something of the Renaissance spirit arrived in the form of Christian IV (1588–1648). Among the Danish kings of the period, he proved the most sympathetic to Norway. He visited the country often, improving the quality of its administration and founding new towns – including Kongsberg, Kristiansand and Christiania (later Oslo) – whose buildings were laid out on a spacious gridiron plan.
At last, in the late sixteenth century, the Norwegian economy began to pick up. The population grew, trade increased and, benefiting from the decline of the Hanseatic League, a native bourgeoisie began to take control of certain parts of the economy, most notably the herring industry. But Norwegian cultural self-esteem remained at a low ebb: the country’s merchants spoke Danish, mimicked Danish manners and read Danish literature. What’s more, Norway was a constant bone of contention between Sweden and Denmark, the result being a long series of wars in which competing armies regularly overran its more easterly provinces.
The beginnings of Danish absolutism
The year 1660 marked a turning point in the constitutional arrangements governing Norway. For centuries, the Danish Council of State had had the power to elect the monarch and impose limitations on his or her rule. Now, a powerful alliance of merchants and clergy swept these powers away to make Frederik III (1609–70) absolute ruler. This was, however, not a reactionary coup, but an attempt to limit the power of the conservative-minded nobility. In addition, the development of a centralized state machine would, many calculated, provide all sorts of job opportunities for the low-born but adept. As a result, Norway was incorporated into the administrative structure of Denmark with royal authority delegated to the beefed-up office of Stattholder, who governed through what soon became a veritable army of professional bureaucrats.
In the event, there were several positive advantages for Norway – the country acquired better defences, simpler taxes, a separate High Court and further doses of Norwegian law – but once again power was exercised almost exclusively by Danes. The functionaries were allowed to charge for their services, and there was no fixed tariff – a swindler’s charter for which the peasantry paid heavily. So much so, in fact, that one of the Stattholders, Ulrik Gyldenløve, launched a vigorous campaign against corruption, his efforts rewarded by a far-reaching series of reforming edicts promulgated in 1684.
The eighteenth century
The absolute monarchy established by Frederik III soon came to concern itself with every aspect of Norwegian life. The ranks and duties of a host of minor officials were carefully delineated, religious observances tightly regulated and restrictions were imposed on everything from begging and dress through to the food and drink that could be consumed at weddings and funerals. This extraordinary superstructure placed a leaden hand on imagination and invention. Neither was it impartial: there were some benefits for the country’s farmers and fishermen, but by and large the system worked in favour of the middle class. The merchants of every small town were allocated exclusive rights to trade in a particular area and competition between towns was forbidden. These local monopolies placed the peasantry at a dreadful disadvantage, nowhere more iniquitously than in the Lofoten islands, where fishermen not only had to buy supplies and equipment at the price set by the merchant, but had to sell their fish at the price set by him too.
The Dano-Norwegian functionaries who controlled Norway also set the cultural agenda, patronizing an insipid and imitative art and literature. The writings of Petter Dass (1647–1707) stand out from the dross, however – heartfelt verses and descriptions of life in the Nordland where he worked as a pastor. There were liberal, vaguely nationalist stirrings too, in the foundation of the Norwegian Society in Copenhagen twelve years later.
Missionaries into the north
There was also renewed missionary interest in Norway’s old colony of Greenland. In part, this was down to the eccentric ethnic obsessions of the clergyman concerned, one Hans Egede (1686–1758), who was looking for Inuit with Viking features, but Bergen’s merchants went along with Egede on condition that he build them a Greenland fur-trading station. As it happened, this was a poor investment, as the trading monopoly was given to a Dane. There was also missionary work in Finnmark, where a determined effort was made to Christianize the Sámi. This was a very different undertaking from Egede’s, and one that reflected the changing temperament of the Lutheran Church of Norway, which had been reinvigorated by pietist clergymen. One of their number, Thomas von Westen (1682–1727), learned the Sámi language and led an extraordinarily successful mission to the far north. He was certainly a good deal more popular than many of his fellow pietists down south who persuaded Christian VI (1730–46) to impose draconian penalties for such crimes as not observing the Sabbath and not going to church regularly.
War and peace
In the meantime, there were more wars between Denmark and Sweden. In 1700, Frederik IV (1699–1730) made the rash decision to attack the Swedes at the time when their king, Karl XII (1682–1718), was generally reckoned to be one of Europe’s most brilliant military strategists. Predictably, the Danes were defeated and only the intervention of the British saved Copenhagen from falling into Swedish hands. Undeterred, Frederik tried again, and this time Karl retaliated by launching a full-scale invasion of Norway. The Swedes rapidly occupied southern Norway, but then, much to everyone’s amazement, things began to go wrong. The Norwegians successfully held out in the Akershus fortress in Christiania (Oslo) and added insult to injury by holding on to Halden too. Furthermore, a naval commander, one Peter Tordenskiold (1691–1720), became a national hero in Norway when he caught the Swedish fleet napping and ripped it to pieces off Strømstad. Karl was forced to retreat, but returned with a new army two years later. He promptly besieged the fortress at Halden for a second time, but while he was inspecting his troops someone shot him in the head – whether it was one of his own soldiers or a Norwegian has been the subject of heated debate (in Scandinavia) ever since. Whatever the truth, Karl’s death enabled the protagonists to agree the Peace of Frederiksborg (1720), which ended hostilities for the rest of the eighteenth century. Tordenskiold, however, did not benefit from the peace: he was killed in a duel after an argument at the gaming table.
Trade and religious revival
Peace favoured the growth of trade, but although Norway’s economy prospered it was hampered by the increasing centralization of the Dano-Norwegian state. Regulations pushed more and more trade through Copenhagen, much to the irritation of the majority of Norwegian merchants who were accustomed to trading direct with their customers. Increasingly, they wanted the same privileges as the Danes, and especially, given the chronic shortage of capital and credit, their own national bank. In the 1760s, Copenhagen did a dramatic U-turn, abolishing monopolies, removing trade barriers and even permitting a free press – and the Norwegian economy boomed. Nonetheless, the bulk of the population remained impoverished and prey to famine whenever the harvest was poor. The number of landless agricultural labourers rose dramatically, partly because more prosperous farmers were buying up large slices of land, and for the first time Norway had something akin to a proletariat.
Nonetheless, proletariat or not, Norway was one of the few European countries little affected by the French Revolution. Instead of political action, there was a religious revival, with a carpenter by the name of Hans Nielson Hauge (1771–1824) emerging as the leading evangelist. The movement’s characteristic hostility to officialdom caused concern, and Hauge was imprisoned, but in reality it posed little threat to the status quo. The end result was rather the foundation of a Christian fundamentalist movement that is still a force to be reckoned with in parts of west Norway.
The early nineteenth century: the end of union with Denmark
Denmark-Norway had remained neutral throughout the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) between England and France, and renewed that neutrality in 1792, during the period leading up to the Napoleonic Wars. Neutrality was good for Norway: overseas trade, especially with England, flourished, and demand for Norwegian timber, iron and cargo-space heralded a period of unparalleled prosperity at least for the bourgeoisie. However, when Napoleon implemented a trade blockade – the Continental System – against Britain, he roped in the Danes. As a result, the British fleet bombarded Copenhagen in 1807 and forced the surrender of the entire Dano-Norwegian fleet. Denmark, in retaliation, declared war on England and Sweden. The move was disastrous for the Norwegian economy, which had also suffered bad harvests in 1807 and 1808, and the English blockade of its seaports ruined trade.
By 1811 it was obvious to many Norwegians that the Danes had backed the wrong side in the war, and the idea of a union of equals with Sweden, which had supported Britain, became increasingly attractive. By attaching their coat-tails to the victors, they hoped to restore the commercially vital trade with England. They also thought that the new Swedish king would be able to deal with the Danes if it came to a fight – just as the Swedes had themselves calculated when they appointed him in 1810. The man concerned, Karl XIV Johan, was, curiously enough, none other than Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, formerly one of Napoleon’s marshals. With perfect timing, he had helped the British defeat Napoleon at Leipzig in 1813. His reward came in the Treaty of Kiel the following year, when the great powers instructed the Danes to cede to Sweden all rights in Norway (although they did keep the dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes). Four hundred years of union were ended at a stroke.
Union with Sweden (1814–1905)
The high-handed transfer of Norway from Denmark to Sweden did little to assuage the growing demands for greater Norwegian independence. Furthermore, the Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik roamed Norway stirring up fears of Swedish intentions. The prince and his supporters convened a Constituent Assembly, which met in a country house outside Eidsvoll in April 1814 and produced a constitution. Issued on May 17, 1814 (still a national holiday), this declared Norway to be a “free, independent and indivisible realm” with Christian Frederik as its king. Not surprisingly, Karl Johan would have none of this and – with the support of the great powers – he promptly invaded Norway. Completely outgunned, Christian Frederik barely mounted any resistance. In exchange for Swedish promises to recognize the Norwegian constitution and the Storting (parliament), he abdicated as soon as he had signed a peace treaty – the so-called Convention of Moss – in August 1814.
The ensuing period was marred by struggles between the Storting and Karl XIV Johan over the nature of the union. Although the constitution emphasized Norway’s independence, Johan had a suspensive veto over the Storting’s actions, the post of Stattholder in Norway could only be held by a Swede, and foreign and diplomatic matters concerning Norway remained entirely in Swedish hands. Despite this, Karl Johan proved popular in Norway, and during his reign the country enjoyed a degree of independence. The Swedes allowed all the highest offices in Norway to be filled by Norwegians and democratic local councils were established, in part due to the rise of the peasant farmers as a political force.
Pan-Scandinavianism
Under both Oscar I (1844–59) and Karl XV (1859–72), however, it was pan-Scandinavianism that ruled the intellectual roost. This belief in the natural solidarity of Denmark, Norway and Sweden was espoused by the leading artists of the period, but died a toothless death in 1864 when the Norwegians and the Swedes refused to help Denmark when it was attacked by Austria and Prussia; some of the loudest cries of treachery came from a young writer by the name of Henrik Ibsen, whose poetic drama, Brand, was a spirited indictment of Norwegian perfidy.
The end of the union with Sweden
In the 1850s, domestic politics were transformed by the rise to power of Johan Sverdrup (1816–92), who started a long and ultimately successful campaign to wrest executive power from the king and transfer it to the Storting. By the mid-1880s, Sverdrup and his political allies had pretty much won the day, though a further bout of sabre-rattling between the supporters of Norwegian independence and the Swedish king Oscar II (1872–1907) was necessary before both sides would accept a plebiscite. This took place in August 1905, when there was an overwhelming vote in favour of the dissolution of the union, which was duly confirmed by the Treaty of Karlstad. A second plebiscite determined that independent Norway should be a monarchy rather than a republic, and, in November 1905, Prince Karl of Denmark (Edward VII of England’s son-in-law) was elected to the throne as Håkon VII (1872–1957).
Norway’s National Romantic movement
In the meantime, Norway’s increasing prosperity had been having important social and cultural implications. The layout and buildings of modern Oslo – the Royal Palace, Karl Johans gate, the university – date from this period, while Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857), the most distinguished Scandinavian landscape painter of his day, was instrumental in the foundation of Oslo’s Nasjonalgalleriet (National Gallery) in 1836. More importantly, Dahl and other prominent members of the bourgeoisie formed the nucleus of a National Romantic movement, which championed all things Norwegian. The movement’s serious intent was flagged up by Jens Kraft, who produced a massive six-volume topographical survey of the country, and the poet, prose writer and propagandist Henrik Wergeland (1808–45), who decried the civil-servant culture that had dominated Norway for so long in favour of the more sincere qualities of the peasant farmer. Indeed, the movement endowed the Norwegian peasantry with all sorts of previously unidentified qualities, while the temperance movement sought to bring them up to these lofty ideals by promoting laws to prohibit the use of small stills, once found on every farm. The government obliged by formally banning these stills in 1844, and by the mid-nineteenth century, consumption of spirits had dropped drastically and coffee rivalled beer as the national drink.
Similarly, the Norwegian language and its folklore was rediscovered by a number of academics, helping to restore the country’s cultural self-respect. Following on were authors like Alexander Kielland, whose key works were published between 1880 and 1891, and Knut Hamsun (1859–1952), whose most characteristic novel, Hunger, was published in 1890. In music, Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) was inspired by old Norwegian folk melodies, composing some of his most famous music for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, while the artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) completed many of his major works in the 1880s and 1890s. Finally, the internationally acclaimed dramatist Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) returned to Oslo in 1891 after a prolonged self-imposed exile.
FRIDTJOF NANSEN
One of Norway’s most celebrated sons, Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), was something of a Renaissance man – in fact, his skills and abilities were so wide-ranging that it almost seems unfair. As a teenager, he was a champion skier and ice skater and in his twenties he moved on to exploration: in 1888, he led the first expedition across the interior of Greenland and in the 1890s he made a gallant if ultimately unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole. He then went on to study zoology, becoming an influential figure in the field of neurology, and, after supporting Norway’s break with Sweden in 1905, he was appointed the Norwegian representative in London. The last years of his life were devoted to the League of Nations, where he became the High Commissioner for Refugees. Among much else, Nansen struggled manfully to mitigate the effects of the famine in the Soviet Union in 1921 and pioneered the use of the so-called “Nansen passport” for the stateless and dispossessed at the end of World War I. In 1922, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Early independence: 1905–39
Norway’s independence came at a time of further economic advance, engendered by the introduction of hydroelectric power and underpinned by a burgeoning merchant navy, the third-largest after the US and Britain. Social reforms also saw funds being made available for unemployment relief, accident insurance schemes and a Factory Act (1909), governing safety in the workplace. An extension to the franchise gave the vote to all men over 25, and, in 1913, to women too. The education system was reorganized, and substantial sums were spent on new arms and defence. This prewar period also saw the emergence of a strong trade-union movement and of a Labour Party committed to revolutionary change.
Since 1814, Norway had had little to do with European affairs, and at the outbreak of World War I it declared itself neutral. Its sympathies, though, lay largely with the Western Allies, and the Norwegian economy boomed as its ships and timber were in great demand. Yet, by 1916, Norway had begun to feel the pinch as German submarines took to sinking both enemy and neutral shipping, and by the end of the war Norway had lost half its chartered tonnage and 2000 crew. The Norwegian economy also suffered after the Americans entered the war: the US imposed strict trade restrictions in their attempt to prevent supplies getting to Germany, and rationing had to be introduced across Norway. Indeed, the overall price of neutrality turned out to be high: there was a rise in state expenditure, a soaring cost of living and, at the end of the war, no seat at the conference table. In spite of its losses, Norway got no share of confiscated German shipping, although it was partly compensated by gaining sovereignty of Spitsbergen and its coal deposits – the first extension of Norwegian frontiers for 500 years. In 1920 Norway also entered the new League of Nations.
The late 1920s
In the late 1920s, the decline in world trade led to decreased demand for Norwegian shipping and raw materials. This led to a prolonged period of economic disarray within Norway during which there was a string of bank failures, wild currency fluctuations and bitter industrial strife, with wage cuts and burgeoning unemployment as the backcloth. A strengthening Norwegian Labour Party took advantage of the situation, breaking out of its urban heartlands in the election of 1927 to become the largest party within the Storting, but it could not muster an overall majority and the old Liberal-Conservative elite manoeuvred them out of office within a fortnight. Many Norwegians felt cheated and trade disputes and lockouts continued with troops often used to protect scabs.
The early 1930s
During World War I, Prohibition had been introduced as a temporary measure and a referendum of 1919 showed a clear majority in favour of its continuation. But the ban did little to quell – and even exacerbated – drunkenness, and it was completely abandoned in 1926, replaced by the government monopoly on the sale of wines and spirits that remains in force today. The 1933 election gave the Labour Party more seats than ever. Having shed its revolutionary image, a campaigning, reformist Labour Party benefited from the growing popular conviction that state control and a centrally planned economy were the only answer to Norway’s economic problems. In 1935 the Labour Party, in alliance with the Agrarian Party, took power – an unlikely combination since the Agrarians were profoundly nationalist in outlook, so much so that one of their defence spokesmen had been the rabid anti-Semite Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945). Frustrated by the democratic process, Quisling had left the Agrarians in 1933 to found Nasjonal Samling (National Unification), a fascist movement which proposed, among other things, that both Hitler and Mussolini should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Quisling had good contacts with Nazi Germany but little support in Norway – local elections in 1937 reduced his local representation to a mere seven seats, and party membership fell to 1500.
The Labour government under Johan Nygaardsvold (1879–1952) presided over an improving economy. By 1938 industrial production was 75 percent higher than it had been in 1914 and unemployment dropped as expenditure on roads, railways and public works increased. Social-welfare reforms were implemented and trade-union membership increased. When war broke out in 1939, Norway was lacking only one thing – adequate defence. A vigorous member of the League of Nations, the country had pursued disarmament- and peace-oriented policies since the end of World War I and was determined to remain neutral.
World War II
Odd as it may seem in hindsight, in early 1940 the Norwegian government was more preoccupied with Allied mine-laying off the Norwegian coast than the threat posed by Hitler. The Allies mined Norwegian waters in an attempt to prevent Swedish iron ore being shipped from Narvik to Germany, but the Norwegians felt this compromised their neutrality. Indeed, such was Norwegian naivety that they made a formal protest to Britain on the day of the German invasion. Caught napping, the Norwegian army offered little initial resistance and the south and central regions of the country were quickly overrun. King Håkon and the Storting were forced into a hasty evacuation of Oslo and headed north to Elverum, evading capture by just a couple of hours. Here, at the government’s temporary headquarters, the executive was granted full powers to take whatever decisions were necessary in the interests of Norway – a mandate which later formed the basis of the Norwegian government-in-exile in Britain.
The Germans contacted the king and his government in Elverum, demanding, among other things, that Quisling be accepted as prime minister as a condition of surrender. Though their situation was desperate, the Norwegians rejected this outright and instead chose resistance. The ensuing campaign lasted for two months and, although the Norwegians fought determinedly with the help of a small force of British regulars, they were no match for the German army. In June both king and government fled to Britain from Tromsø in northern Norway. The country was rapidly brought under Nazi control, Hitler sending Josef Terboven to take full charge of Norwegian affairs.
The fascist Nasjonal Samling was declared the only legal party and the media, civil servants and teachers were brought under its control. As civil resistance grew, a state of emergency was declared: two trade-union leaders were shot, arrests increased and a concentration camp was set up outside Oslo. In February 1942 Quisling was installed as “Minister President” of Norway, but it soon became clear that his government didn’t have the support of the Norwegian people. The Church refused to cooperate, schoolteachers protested and trade-union members and officials resigned en masse. In response, deportations increased, death sentences were announced and a compulsory labour scheme was introduced.
The Resistance
Military resistance escalated as the German occupation hardened. A military organization (MILORG) was established as a branch of the armed forces under the control of the High Command in London. By May 1941 it had enlisted 20,000 men (32,000 by 1944) in clandestine groups all over the country. Arms and instructors came from Britain, radio stations were set up and a continuous flow of intelligence about German movements was sent back. Sabotage operations were legion, the most notable being the destruction of the heavy-water plant at Rjukan, foiling a German attempt to produce an atomic bomb. Reprisals against the Resistance were severe and some were carried out by Norwegian collaborators, around 15,000 of whom enlisted in the German army.
The government-in-exile in London continued to represent free Norway to the world, mobilizing support on behalf of the Allies. Most of the Norwegian merchant fleet was abroad when the Nazis invaded, and by 1943 the Norwegian navy had seventy ships helping the Allied convoys. With the German position deteriorating, neutral Sweden adopted a more sympathetic policy to its Norwegian neighbours, allowing the creation of thinly disguised training grounds for Resistance fighters. These camps also served to produce the police detachments that were to secure law and order after liberation.
German surrender
When the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, overt action against the occupying Germans in Norway was temporarily discouraged as the US and Britain could not guarantee military supplies. Help was at hand, however, in the form of the Soviets who crossed into the far north of Norway in late October, driving back the Germans at double speed. Tragically, the Germans chose to burn everything in their path as they retreated, a scorched-earth policy that inflicted untold suffering on the local population, many of whom hid in the forests and caves. To prevent the Germans reinforcing their beleaguered Finnmark battalions, the Resistance organized a campaign of mass railway sabotage, stopping three-quarters of the troop movements overnight. With their control of Norway crumbling, the Germans finally surrendered on May 7, 1945. King Håkon returned to Norway on June 7, five years to the day since he’d left for exile.
Terboven committed suicide and the NS collaborators were rounded up. A caretaker government took office, staffed by Resistance leaders, and was replaced in October 1945 by a majority Labour government. The Communists won eleven seats, reflecting the efforts of Communist saboteurs in the war and the prestige that the Soviet Union enjoyed in Norway after the liberation. Quisling was shot, along with 24 other high-ranking traitors, and thousands of collaborators were punished with varying degrees of severity.
Postwar reconstruction
At the end of the war, Norway was on its knees: the far north – Finnmark – had been laid waste, half the mercantile fleet lost, and production was at a standstill. Nevertheless, recovery, fostered by a palpable sense of national unity, was quick and it was only three years before GNP was at its prewar level. In addition, Norway’s part in the war had increased her international prestige. The country became one of the founding members of the United Nations in 1945, and the first UN Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, was, at the time of his appointment, Norwegian Foreign Minister. With the failure of discussions to promote a Scandinavian defence union, the Storting also voted to enter NATO in 1949.
Domestically, there was general agreement about the form that social reconstruction should take. In 1948, the Storting passed the laws that introduced the Welfare State almost unanimously. The 1949 election saw the government returned with a larger majority, and Labour governments continued to be elected throughout the following decade, with the dominant political figure being Einar Gerhardsen (1897–1987). As national prosperity increased, society became ever more egalitarian, levelling up rather than down. Subsidies were paid to the agricultural and fishing industries, wages increased, and a comprehensive social security system helped to eradicate poverty. The state ran the important mining industry, was the largest shareholder in the national hydroelectric company and built an enormous steelworks at Mo-i-Rana to help develop the economy of the devastated northern counties. Rationing ended in 1952 and, as the demand for higher education grew, so new universities were created in Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø.
Beyond consensus: the 1960s to the 1970s
The political consensus began to fragment in the early 1960s. Following the restructuring of rural constituencies in the 1950s, there was a realignment in centre politics, the outmoded Agrarian Party becoming the Centre Party. There was change on the left too, where defence squabbles within the Labour Party led to the formation of the Socialist People’s Party (SF), which wanted Norway out of NATO and sought a renunciation of nuclear weapons. The Labour Party’s 1961 declaration that no nuclear weapons would be stationed in Norway except under an immediate threat of war did not placate the SF, who unexpectedly took two seats at the election that year. Holding the balance of power, the SF voted with the Labour Party until 1963, when it helped bring down the government over mismanagement of state industries. A replacement coalition collapsed after only one month, but the writing was on the wall. Rising prices, dissatisfaction with high taxation and a continuing housing shortage meant that the 1965 election put a non-socialist coalition in power for the first time in twenty years.
Under the leadership of Per Borten (1913–2005) of the Centre Party, the coalition’s programme was unambitious. Nonetheless, living standards continued to rise, and although the 1969 election saw a marked increase in Labour Party support, the coalition hung onto power. Also that year, oil and gas were discovered beneath the North Sea and, as the vast extent of the reserves became obvious, it became clear that the Norwegians were to enjoy a magnificent bonanza – one which was destined to pay a large chunk of the government’s annual bills.
Elsewhere, Norway’s politicians, who had applied twice previously for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) – in 1962 and 1967 – believed that de Gaulle’s fall in France presented a good opportunity for a third application, which was made in 1970. There was great concern, though, about the effect of membership on Norwegian agriculture and fisheries, and in 1971 Per Borten was forced to resign following his indiscreet handling of the negotiations. The Labour Party, the majority of its representatives in favour of EEC membership, formed a minority administration, but when the 1972 referendum narrowly voted “No” to joining the EEC, the government resigned.
With the 1973 election producing another minority Labour government, the uncertain political pattern of the previous ten years continued. Even the postwar consensus on Norwegian security policy broke down on various issues – primarily the question of a northern European nuclear-free zone and the stocking of Allied material in Norway – although there remained strong agreement for continued NATO membership.
The 1980s and early 1990s
In 1983, the Christian Democrats and the Centre Party joined together in a non-socialist coalition, which lasted only two years. It was replaced in 1986 by a minority Labour administration, led by Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland (b.1939), Norway’s first woman prime minister. She made sweeping changes to the way the country was run, introducing seven women into her eighteen-member cabinet, but her government was beset by problems for the three years of its life: tumbling oil prices led to a recession, unemployment rose (though only to four percent) and there was widespread dissatisfaction with Labour’s high taxation policies.
At the general election in September 1989, Labour lost eight seats and was forced out of office – the worst result the party had suffered since 1930. More surprising was the success of the extremist parties on both political wings – the anti-NATO, leftist Socialist Party and the right-wing, anti-immigrant Progress Party both scored spectacular results, winning almost a quarter of the votes cast, and increasing their representation in the Storting many times over. This deprived the Conservative Party (one of whose leaders, bizarrely, was Gro Harlem Brundtland’s husband) of the majority it might have expected, the result being yet another shaky minority administration – this time a centre-right coalition between the Conservatives, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats, led by Jan Syse.
The new government immediately faced problems familiar to the last Labour administration. In particular, there was continuing conflict over joining the European Community (as the European Union was then known), a policy still supported by many in the Norwegian establishment but flatly rejected by the Centre Party. It was this, in part, that signalled the end of the coalition, for after just over a year in office, the Centre Party withdrew its support and forced the downfall of Syse. In October 1990, Gro Harlem Brundtland was put back in power at the head of a minority Labour administration, remaining in office till her re-election for a fourth minority term in 1993. The 1993 elections saw a revival in Labour Party fortunes and, to the relief of the majority, the collapse of the Progress Party vote. However, it was also an untidy, confusing affair where the main issue, membership of the EU, cut across the traditional left-versus-right divide.
The 1990s: political argy-bargy
Following the 1993 election, the country tumbled into a long and fiercely conducted campaign over membership of the EU. Brundtland and her main political opponents wanted in, but despite the near-unanimity of the political class, the Norwegians narrowly rejected the EU in a 1994 referendum. It was a close call (52.5 percent versus 47.5 percent), but in the end farmers and fishermen afraid of the economic results of joining, as well as women’s groups and environmentalists, who felt that Norway’s high standards of social care and “green” controls would suffer, came together to swing opinion against joining. Afterwards, and unlike the Labour government of 1972, the Brundtland administration soldiered on, wisely soothing ruffled feathers by promising to shelve the whole EU membership issue until at least 2000. Nonetheless, the 1997 election saw a move to the right, the main beneficiaries being the Christian Democratic Party and the ultra-conservative Progress Party. In itself, this was not enough to remove the Labour-led coalition from office – indeed Labour remained comfortably the largest party – but the right was dealt a trump card by the new Labour leader, Thorbjørn Jagland. During the campaign Jagland had promised that the Labour Party would step down from office if it failed to elicit more than the 36.9 percent of the vote it had secured in 1993. Much to the chagrin of his colleagues, Jagland’s political chickens came home to roost when Labour only received 35 percent of the vote – and they had to go, leaving power in the hands of an unwieldy right-of-centre, minority coalition. Bargaining with its rivals from a position of parliamentary weakness, the new government found it difficult to cut a clear path – or at least one very different from its predecessor – apart from managing to antagonize the women’s movement by some reactionary social legislation whose none-too-hidden subtext seemed to read “A woman’s place is in the home”. In the spring of 2000, the government resigned and the Labour Party resumed command.
The 2000s to the present day
The Labour Party administration that took over the reins of government in 2000 didn’t last long: in elections the following year, they took a drubbing and the right prospered, paving the way for another ungainly centre-right coalition. This coalition battled on until late 2005 when the Labour Party, along with its allies the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party, won a general election, with the politically experienced Jens Stoltenberg becoming Prime Minister – as he remains at time of writing. Stoltenberg proceeded to bolt together one of Norway’s more secure coalitions with a standard-issue, centre-left political agenda: for instance, a flexible retirement from the age of 62 (it was 67) was introduced in 2010; a careful incomes policy was geared to the needs of both employer and employee; and there were detailed promises on tackling climate change and global warming. As Stoltenberg put it himself at the time of his election victory “Our gains are due to a clear political message about jobs, education, and giving people security in their old age. Our aim is to give this country a stable and predictable government.”
In the summer of 2008, however, the wheels began to come off the coalition wagon with arguments about the killing of wolves, corruption, and the state of the health-care system. Stoltenberg’s popularity sank, but then came the worldwide banking crisis during which Stoltenberg started to look more like a prime minister who could take care of business – and the opinion polls gave him and his Labour Party a much improved rating. He was helped by the soundness of the Norwegian banking system, which had learnt some harsh lessons about capitalization during the country’s own banking crisis, which had run from 1988 to 1993. Even so, Stoltenberg was obliged to dip into the country’s oil wealth in 2009 to set up two funds totalling 100 billion kroner to bolster its banks and bond market.
Neither was Stoltenberg averse to some political shimmying, conspicuously tightening immigration rules to undercut criticism coming from the Progress Party to his political right. The proof was in the electoral pudding of 2009, when the Labour Party-led coalition won another parliamentary majority, albeit with less of the popular vote than its rivals (47.9% versus 49.5%). Few would argue that Stoltenberg has become a shrewd political operator and aspects of his private life have attracted much sympathetic attention, not least the heroin addiction of his sister Nini. More importantly, Stoltenberg was equal to the task of speaking the nation’s grief at a memorial service held in Oslo cathedral after the dreadful events of July 22, 2011, when Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 innocents by detonating a bomb in Oslo and then going on a shooting spree at a Labour Party summer camp.
RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM NORWAY
“Adventure is just bad planning.”
“Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool.”
“The burden of disease falls on the poor.”
“We do not regard Englishmen as foreigners. We look on them only as rather mad Norwegians.”
“I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell.”
Into the future
In the long term, quite what Norway will make of its splendid isolation from the EU is unclear, though the situation is mitigated by Norway’s membership of the European Economic Agreement (EEA), a free-trade deal of January 1994 that covers both Norway and the EU. Whatever happens, and whether or not there is another EU referendum, it’s hard to imagine that the Norwegians will suffer any permanent economic harm. They have, after all, a superabundance of natural resources – primarily 0.6% of the world’s proven oil reserves and 1.6% of the gas – and arguably the most educated workforce in the world with unemployment at consistently low levels (3 per cent or so). But that doesn’t mean the country doesn’t collectively fret: Norway’s Lutheran roots run deep and, if an old joke is to be believed, the low point of the average Norwegian’s year is the summer vacation. There’s also a vague feeling of (Lutheran) unease about the country’s prosperity with no less a figure than Jo Nesbø declaring, in no uncertain terms, that “money has corrupted us”.
The Norwegians also fret (and argue) about environmental issues, with one hot potato being the country’s road building programme. A curse afflicting prewar Norway had always been rural isolation and the Norwegians of 1945 were determined to connect (almost) all of the country’s villages to the road system. Give or take the occasional hamlet, this has now been achieved and a second phase is underway, involving the upgrading of roads and the construction of innumerable tunnels. Wherever this makes conditions safer, the popular consensus for the programme survives, but there is increasing opposition to the prestige projects so beloved by politicians – the enormous tunnel near Flåm being a case in point. There is, however, precious little internal argument when it comes to whaling and sealing, with the majority continuing to support the hunting of these animals as has been the custom for centuries – indeed, for some Norwegians whaling and sealing go some way to defining what they consider to be the national identity. This is inexplicable to many Western Europeans, who point to Norway’s eminently liberal approach to most other matters, but the Norwegians see things very differently: why, many of them ask, is the culling of seals and minke seen in a different light from the mass slaughter of farmed animals?
LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE
Norway has an exceptionally rich body of historical legend and folk tradition – and it plays an important part in the national consciousness even today. Most famous are the sagas, mainly written in Iceland between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries and constituting a vast collection of part-historical, part-fictionalized stories covering several centuries of Norse history. Thanks to the survival of one of these sagas, the Poetic Edda, our knowledge of Norse mythology is also far from conjectural. In addition, much that was not recorded in the sagas survived in the country’s oral tradition and this was revived from the 1830s onwards by the artists and writers of the National Romantic movement. Some members of this movement also set about collecting the folk tales and legends of the rural regions. The difficulties they experienced in rendering the Norwegian dialects into written form – there was no written Norwegian language per se – fuelled the language movement, and sent the academic Ivar Aasen (1813–96) roaming the countryside to assemble the material from which he formulated Landsmål.
Sagas
The Norwegian Vikings settled in Iceland in the ninth century and throughout the medieval period the Icelanders had a deep attachment to, and interest in, their original homeland. The result was a body of work that remains one of the richest sources of European medieval literature. That so much of it has survived is due to Iceland’s isolation – most Norwegian sources disappeared centuries ago.
All the sagas feature real people and tell of events which are usually known to have happened, though the plots are embroidered to suit the tales’ heroic style. They reveal much about a Norse culture in which arguments between individuals might spring from comparatively trivial disputes over horses or sheep, but where a strict code of honour and revenge meant that every insult, whether real or imagined, had to be avenged. Thus personal disputes soon turned into clan vendettas. Plots are complex, the dialogue laconic, and the pared-down prose omits unnecessary detail. New characters are often introduced by means of tedious genealogies, necessary to explain the motivation behind their later actions (though the more adept translations render these explanations as footnotes). Personality is only revealed through speech, facial expressions and general demeanour, or the comments and gossip of others.
The earliest Icelandic work, the Elder or Poetic Edda, comprises 34 lays dating from as early as the eighth century, and they combine to give a detailed insight into early Norse culture as well as pagan cosmogony and belief. It’s not to be confused with the Younger or Prose Edda, written centuries later by Snorri Sturluson, the most distinguished of the saga writers. Also noteworthy are The Vinland Saga, Njal’s Saga and the Laxdaela Saga, tales of ninth- and tenth-century Icelandic derring-do; and Harald’s Saga, a rattling good yarn celebrating the life and times of Harald Hardrada. English translations of all the above are readily available.
Norse mythology
The Vikings shared a common pagan faith, whose polytheistic tenets were upheld right across Scandinavia. The deities were worshipped at a thousand village shrines, usually by means of sacrifices in which animals, weapons, boats and other artefacts, even humans, were gifted to the gods. There was very little theology to sanctify these rituals; instead the principal gods – Odin, Thor and Frey – were surrounded by mythical tales attributing to them a bewildering variety of strengths, weaknesses and powers.
Odin and Frigga
The god of war, wisdom, poetry and magic, Odin was untrustworthy, violent and wise in equal measure. The most powerful of the twelve Viking deities, the Aesir, who lived at Asgard, he was also lord of the Valkyries, women warrior-servants who tended his needs while he held court at Valhalla, the hall of dead heroes. As with many of the other pagan gods, he had the power to change into any form he desired. Odin’s wife, Frigga, was the goddess protecting the home and the family.
Yggdrasil
At the beginning of time, it was Odin who made heaven and earth from the body of the giant Ymir, and created man from an ash tree, woman from an alder. However, Yggdrasil, the tree of life that supported the whole universe, was beyond his control; the Vikings believed that eventually the tree would die and both gods and mortals would perish in the Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods. Among the Anglo-Saxons, the equivalent of Odin was Woden, hence “Wednesday”.
Thor
One of Odin’s sons, Thor appears to have been the most worshipped of the Norse gods. A giant with superhuman strength, he was the short-tempered god of thunder, fire and lightning. He regularly fought with the evil Frost Giants in the Jotunheim mountains, his favourite weapon being the hammer, Mjolnir, which the trolls had fashioned for him. His chariot was drawn by two goats – Cracktooth and Gaptooth – who could be killed and eaten at night, but would be fully recovered the next morning, providing none of their bones were broken. It’s from Thor that we get “Thursday”.
Loki and Sigyn
A negative force, Loki personified cunning and trickery. His treachery turned the other deities against him, and he was chained up beneath a serpent that dripped venom onto his face. His wife, Sigyn, remained loyal and held a bowl over his head to catch the venom, but when the bowl was full she had to turn away to empty it, and in those moments his squirmings would cause earthquakes.
Frey and Freya
The god of fertility was Frey, whose pride and joy was Skidbladnir, a ship that was large enough to carry all the gods, but could still be folded up and put into his bag. He often lived with the elves in Elfheim. Freya was the goddess of love, healing and fertility – and “Friday” was named after her.
Hel and the Norns
The goddess of the dead, Hel lived on brains and bone marrow. She presided over “Hel”, where those who died of illness or old age went, living a miserable existence under the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life. Representing the past, the present and the future, the Norns were the three goddesses of fate, casting lots over the cradle of every newborn child.
Folk tales and legends
Norway’s extensive oral folklore was first written down in the early nineteenth century, most famously by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, the first of whose compilations appeared to great popular acclaim in 1842. These tales succoured the country’s emergent nationalism, but in fact many of them were far from uniquely Norwegian, sharing characteristics with – and having the same roots as – folk tales across the whole of northern Europe. They were, however, populated by stock characters who were recognizably Norwegian – the king, for example, was always pictured as a wealthy farmer.
There are three types of Norwegian folk tale: comical tales; animal yarns, in which the beasts concerned – most frequently the wolf, fox and bear – talk and behave like human beings; and most common of all, magical stories populated by a host of supernatural creatures. The folk tale is always written matter-of-factly, no matter how fantastic the events it retells. In this respect it has much in common with the folk legend, though the latter purports to be factual. Norwegian legends “explain” scores of unusual natural phenomena – the location of boulders, holes in cliffs, etc – and are crammed with supernatural beings, again as is broadly familiar right across northern Europe.
The assorted supernatural creatures of folk tale and legend hark back to the pagan myths of the pre-Christian era, but whereas the Vikings held them of secondary importance to their gods, in Norwegian folk tales they take centre stage. In post-pagan Norwegian folk tradition, these creatures were regarded as the descendants of children that Eve hid from God. When they were discovered by him, they were assigned particular realms in which to dwell, but their illicit wanderings were legion. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, book illustrations by Erik Werenskiold and Theodor Kittelsen effectively defined what the various supernatural creatures looked like in the Norwegian public’s imagination. As mythologized in Norway, the creatures of the folk tales possess a confusing range of virtues and vices. Here’s a brief round-up of some of the more important.
Giants
Enormous in size and strength, the giants of Norwegian folklore were reputed to be rather stupid and capable both of kindly actions and great cruelty towards humans. They usually had a human appearance, but some were monsters with many heads. They were fond of carrying parts of the landscape from one place to another, dropping boulders and even islands as they went. According to the Eddic cosmogony, the first giant, Ymir, was killed by Odin and the world made from his body – his blood formed the sea, his bones the mountains and so on. Ymir was the ancestor of the evil Frost Giants, who lived in Jotunheim, and who regularly fought with Thor.
Trolls
Spirits of the underground, trolls were ambivalent figures, able both to hinder and help humans – and were arguably a folkloric expression of the id. The first trolls were depicted as giants, but later versions were small, strong, misshapen and of pale countenance from living underground; sunlight would turn them into stone. They worked in metals and wood and were fabulous craftsmen. They made Odin’s spear and Thor’s hammer, though Thor’s inclination to throw the weapon at them made them hate noise; as late as the eighteenth century, Norwegian villagers would ring church bells for hours on end to drive them away. If the trolls were forced to make something for a human, they would put a secret curse on it; this would render it dangerous to the owner. Some trolls had a penchant for stealing children and others carried off women to be their wives.
Elves
Akin to fairies, elves were usually divided between good-hearted but mischievous white elves, and nasty black elves, who brought injury and sickness. Both lived underground in a world, Elfheim, that echoed that of humans – with farms, animals and the like – but made excursions into the glades and groves of the forests up above. At night, the white elves liked singing and dancing to the accompaniment of the harp. They were normally invisible, though you could spot their dancing places wherever the grass grew more luxuriantly in circular patterns than elsewhere. The black elves were also invisible, a good job considering they were extremely ugly and had long, filthy noses. If struck by a sunbeam, they would turn to stone. Both types of elf were prone to entice humans into their kingdom, usually for a short period – but sometimes forever.
Wights
In pre-Christian times, the Vikings believed their lands to be populated with invisible guardian spirits, the wights (vetter), who needed to be treated with respect. One result was that when a longship was approaching the shore, the fearsome figurehead at its prow was removed so as not to frighten the vetter away. Bad luck would follow if a vetter left the locality.
Witches
As with witches across much of the rest of Europe, the Scandinavian version was typically an old woman who had made a pact with the Devil, swapping her soul in return for special powers. The witch could inflict injury and illness, especially if she was in possession of something her victim had touched or owned – anything from a lock of hair to an item of clothing. She could disguise herself as an animal, and had familiars – usually insects or cats – which assisted her in foul deeds. Most witches travelled through the air on broomsticks, but some rode on wolves bridled with snakes.
Water spirits
Personifying all those who have died at sea, the draugen was a ghostly apparition who appeared as a headless fisherman in oilskins. He sailed the seas in half a boat and wailed when someone was about to drown. Other water spirits included the malicious river sprite, the nixie, who could assume different forms to lure the unsuspecting to a watery grave. There were also the shy and benign mermaids and mermen, half-fish and half-human, who dived into the water whenever they spied a human. However, they also liked to dress up as humans to go to market.
VIKING CUSTOMS AND RITUALS
The Vikings have long been the subject of historical discussion and debate with accurate and unbiased contemporary accounts being few and far between. A remarkable exception is the annals of Ibn Fadlan, a member of a diplomatic delegation sent from the Baghdad Caliphate to Bulgar on the Volga in 921–922 AD. In the following extracts Fadlan details the habits and rituals of a tribe of Swedish Vikings, the Rus, who dealt in furs and slaves. The first piece notes with disgust the finer points of Viking personal hygiene, the second provides a sober eyewitness account of the rituals of a Viking ship burial.
Habits and rituals
I saw the Rus when they arrived on their trading mission and anchored at the River Atul (Volga). Never had I seen people of more perfect physique; they are tall as date-palms, and reddish in colour. They wear neither mantle nor coat, but each man carries a cape, which covers one half of his body, leaving one hand free. Their swords are Frankish in pattern, broad, flat and fluted. Each man has (tattooed upon him) trees, figures and the like from the finger-nails to the neck. Each woman carries on her bosom a container made of iron, silver, copper or gold – its size and substance depending on her man’s wealth. Attached to the container is a ring carrying her knife, which is also tied to her bosom. Round her neck she wears gold or silver rings; when a man amasses 10,000 dirhems he makes his wife one gold ring; when he has 20,000 he makes two; and so the woman gets a new ring for every 10,000 dirhems her husband acquires, and often a woman has many of these rings. Their finest ornaments are green beads made from clay. They will go to any length to get hold of these; for one dirhem they procure one such bead and they string these into necklaces for their women.
They are the filthiest of god’s creatures. They do not wash after discharging their natural functions, neither do they wash their hands after meals. They are as stray donkeys. They arrive from their distant lands and lay their ships alongside the banks of the Atul, which is a great river, and there they build big wooden houses on its shores. Ten or twenty of them may live together in one house, and each of them has a couch of his own where he sits and diverts himself with the pretty slave-girls whom he has brought along to offer for sale. He will make love with one of them in the presence of his comrades, sometimes this develops into a communal orgy and, if a customer should turn up to buy a girl, the Rus will not let her go till he has finished with her.
Every day they wash their faces and heads, all using the same water which is as filthy as can be imagined. This is how it is done. Every morning a girl brings her master a large bowl of water in which he washes his face and hands and hair, combing it also over the bowl, then blows his nose and spits into the water. No dirt is left on him which doesn’t go into the water. When he has finished the girl takes the same bowl to his neighbour – who repeats the performance – until the bowl has gone round the entire household. All have blown their noses, spat and washed their faces and hair in the water.
On anchoring their vessels, each man goes ashore carrying bread, meat, onions, milk, and nabid [wine], and these he takes to a large wooden stake with a face like that of a human being, surrounded by smaller figures, and behind them tall poles in the ground. Each man prostrates himself before the large post and recites: “O Lord, I have come from distant parts with so many girls, so many furs (and whatever other commodities he is carrying). I now bring you this offering.” He then presents his gift and continues “Please send me a merchant who has many dinars and dirhems, and who will trade favourably with me without too much bartering.” Then he retires. If, after this, business does not pick up quickly and go well, he returns to the statue to present further gifts. If results continue slow, he then presents gifts to the minor figures and begs their intercession, saying, “These are our Lord’s wives, daughters and sons.” Then he pleads before each figure in turn, begging them to intercede for him and humbling himself before them. Often trade picks up, and he says “My Lord has required my needs, and now it is my duty to repay him.” Whereupon he sacrifices goats or cattle, some of which he distributes as alms. The rest he lays before the statues, large and small, and the heads of the beasts he plants upon the poles. After dark, of course, the dogs come and devour the lot – and the successful trader says, “My Lord is pleased with me, and has eaten my offerings.”
If one of the Rus falls sick they put him in a tent by himself and leave bread and water for him. They do not visit him, however, or speak to him, especially if he is a serf. Should he recover he rejoins the others; if he dies they burn him. If he happens to be a serf, however, they leave him for the dogs and vultures to devour. If they catch a robber they hang him in a tree until he is torn to shreds by wind and weather …
The burial
… I had been told that when their chieftains died cremation was the least part of their whole funeral procedure, and I was, therefore, very much interested to find out more about this. One day I heard that one of their leaders had died. They laid him forthwith in a grave, which they covered up for ten days till they had finished cutting-out and sewing his costume. If the dead man is poor they make a little ship, put him in it, and burn it. If he is wealthy, however, they divide his property and goods into three parts: one for his family, one to pay for his costume, and one to make nabid. This they drink on the day when the slave woman of the dead man is killed and burnt together with her master. They are deeply addicted to nabid, drinking it day and night; and often one of them has been found dead with a beaker in his hand. When a chieftain among them has died, his family demands of his slave women and servants: “Which of you wishes to die with him?” Then one of them says “I do” – and having said that the person concerned is forced to do so, and no backing out is possible. Those who are willing are mostly the slave women.
So when this man died they said to his slave women “Which of you wants to die with him?” One of them answered “I do.” From that moment she was put in the constant care of two other women servants who took care of her to the extent of washing her feet with their own hands. They began to get things ready for the dead man, to cut his costume and so on, while every day the doomed woman drank and sang as though in anticipation of a joyous event.
When the day arrived on which the chieftain and his slave woman were going to be burnt, I went to the river where his ship was moored. It had been hauled ashore and four posts were made for it of birch and other wood. Further there was arranged around it what looked like a big store of wood. Then the ship was hauled near and placed on the wood. People now began to walk about talking in a language I could not understand, and the corpse still lay in the grave; they had not taken it out. They then produced a wooden bench, placed it on the ship, and covered it with carpets of Byzantine dibag (painted silk) and with cushions of Byzantine dibag. Then came an old woman whom they called “the Angel of Death”, and she spread these cushions out over the bench. She was in charge of the whole affair from dressing the corpse to the killing of the slave woman. I noticed that she was an old giant-woman, a massive and grim figure. When they came to his grave they removed the earth from the wooden frame and they also took the frame away. They then divested the corpse of the clothes in which he had died. The body, I noticed, had turned black because of the intense frost. When they first put him in the grave, they had also given him beer, fruit, and a lute, all of which they now removed. Strangely enough the corpse did not smell, nor had anything about him changed save the colour of his flesh. They now proceeded to dress him in hose, and trousers, boots, coat, and a mantle of dibag adorned with gold buttons; put on his head a cap of dibag and sable fur; and carried him to the tent on the ship, where they put him on the blanket and supported him with cushions. They then produced nabid, fruit, and aromatic plants, and put these round his body; and they also brought bread, meat, and onions which they flung before him. Next they took a dog, cut it in half, and flung the pieces into the ship, and after this they took all his weapons and placed them beside him.
Next they brought two horses and ran them about until they were in a sweat, after which they cut them to pieces with swords and flung their meat into the ship; this also happened to two cows. Then they produced a cock and a hen, killed them, and threw them in. Meanwhile the slave woman who wished to be killed walked up and down, going into one tent after the other, and the owner of each tent had sexual intercourse with her, saying “Tell your master I did this out of love for him.”
It was now Friday afternoon and they took the slave woman away to something which they had made resembling a doorframe. Then she placed her legs on the palms of the men and reached high enough to look over the frame, and she said something in a foreign language, after which they took her down. And they lifted her again and she did the same as the first time. Then they took her down and lifted her a third time and she did the same as the first and second times. Then they gave her a chicken and she cut its head off and threw it away; they took the hen and threw it into the ship. Then I asked the interpreter what she had done. He answered: “The first time they lifted her she said: ‘Look! I see my mother and father.’ The second time she said: ‘Look! I see all my dead relatives sitting around.’ The third time she said: ‘Look! I see my master in Paradise, and Paradise is beautiful and green and together with him are men and young boys. He calls me. Let me join him then.’”
They now led her towards the ship. Then she took off two bracelets she was wearing and gave them to the old woman, “the Angel of Death”, the one who was going to kill her. She next took off two anklets she was wearing and gave them to the daughters of that same woman. They then led her to the ship but did not allow her inside the tent. Then a number of men carrying wooden shields and sticks arrived, and gave her a beaker with nabid. She sang over it and emptied it. The interpreter then said to me, “Now with that she is bidding farewell to all her women friends.” Then she was given another beaker. She took it and sang a lengthy song; but the old woman told her to hurry and drink up and enter the tent where her master was. When I looked at her she seemed completely bewildered. She wanted to enter the tent and she put her head between it and the ship. Then the woman took her head and managed to get it inside the tent, and the woman herself followed. Then the men began to beat the shields with the wooden sticks, to deaden her shouts so that the other girls would not become afraid and shrink from dying with their masters. Six men entered the tent and all of them had intercourse with her. Thereafter they laid her by the side of her dead master. Two held her hands and two her feet, and the woman called “the Angel of Death” put a cord round the girl’s neck, doubled with an end at each side, and gave it to two men to pull. Then she advanced holding a small dagger with a broad blade and began to plunge it between the girl’s ribs to and fro while the two men choked her with the cord till she died.
The dead man’s nearest kinsman now appeared. He took a piece of wood and ignited it. Then he walked backwards, his back towards the ship and his face towards the crowd, holding the piece of wood in one hand and the other hand on his buttock; and he was naked. In this way the wood was ignited which they had placed under the ship after they had laid the slave woman, whom they had killed, beside her master. Then people came with branches and wood; each brought a burning brand and threw it on the pyre, so that the fire took hold of the wood, then the ship, then the tent and the man and the slave woman and all. Thereafter a strong and terrible wind rose so that the flame stirred and the fire blazed still more.
I heard one of the Rus folk, standing by, say something to my interpreter, and when I inquired what he had said, my interpreter answered: “He said: ‘You Arabs are foolish’”. “Why?” I asked. “Well, because you throw those you love and honour to the ground where the earth and the maggots and fields devour them, whereas we, on the other hand, burn them up quickly and they go to Paradise that very moment.” The man burst out laughing, and on being asked why, he said: “His Lord, out of love for him, has sent this wind to take him away within the hour!” And so it proved, for within that time the ship and the pyre, the girl and the corpse had all become ashes and then dust. On the spot where the ship stood after having been hauled ashore, they built something like a round mould. In the middle of it they raised a large post of birch-wood on which they wrote the names of the dead man and the king of the Rus, and then the crowd dispersed.
The above extract, translated by Karre Stov, was taken from The Vikings by Johanes Brøndsted, and is reprinted by permission of Penguin Books.
FLORA AND FAUNA
There are significant differences in climate between the west coast of Norway, which is warmed by the Gulf Stream, and the interior of the country, but these variations prove much less significant for the country’s flora than altitude and latitude. With regard to Norway’s fauna, wild animals survive in significant numbers in the more inaccessible regions, but have been hunted extensively elsewhere, while the west coast is home to dozens of extensive sea-bird colonies.
Flora
Much of the Norwegian landscape is dominated by vast forests of spruce, though these are, in fact, a relatively recent feature: the original forest cover was mainly of pine, birch and oak, and only in the last two thousand years has spruce spread across the whole of southeast and central Norway. That said, a rich variety of deciduous trees – notably oak, ash, lime, hazel, rowan, elm and maple – still flourishes in a wide belt along the south coast, up through the fjord country and as far north as Trondheim, but only at relatively low altitudes. For their part, conifers thin out at around 900m above sea level in the south, 450m in Finnmark, to be replaced by a birch zone, where there are also aspen and mountain ash. Norway’s deciduous trees contrive to ripen their seeds despite a short, cool summer, and can consequently be found at low altitudes almost as far north as Nordkapp (North Cape) – as can the pine, the most robust of the conifers. At around 1100m/650m, the birch fizzle out to be replaced by willow and dwarf birch, while above the timber line are bare mountain peaks and huge plateaux, the latter usually dotted with hundreds of lakes.
Berries
Norway accommodates in the region of two thousand plant species, but few of these are native. The most sought-after are the berrying species that grow wild all over Norway, mainly cranberries, blueberries and yellow cloudberries. Common in the country’s peat bogs, and now also extensively cultivated, the cloudberry is a small herbaceous bramble whose fruits have a tangy flavour that is much prized in Norway – and very fashionable today in some of the country’s best foodie haunts. In drier situations and on the mountain plateaux, lichens – the favourite food of the reindeer – predominate, while in all but the thickest of spruce forests, the ground is thickly carpeted with moss and heather.
Wild flowers
Everywhere, spring brings wild flowers, splashes of brilliant colour at their most intense on the west coast, where a wide range of mountain plants is nourished by the wet conditions and a geology that varies from limestone to acidic granites. Most of these species can also be found in the Alps, but there are several rarities, notably the alpine clematis (Clematis alpina) found in the Gudbrandsdal valley, hundreds of miles from its normal homes in eastern Finland and the Carpathian mountains. Another, larger group comprises about thirty Canadian mountain plants, found in Europe only in the Dovre and Jotunheim mountains; quite how they come to be there has long baffled botanists.
The mildness of the west-coast winter has allowed certain species to prosper beyond their usual northerly latitudes. Among species that can tolerate very little frost or snow are the star hyacinth (Scilla verna) and the purple heather (Erica purpurea), while a short distance inland come varieties that can withstand only short icy spells, including the foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) and the holly (Ilex aquifolium). In the southeastern part of the country, where the winters are harder and the summers hotter, the conditions support species that can lie dormant under the snow for several months a year – for example the blue anemone (Anemone hepatica) and the aconite (Aconitum septentrionale).
In the far north, certain Siberian species have migrated west down the rivers and along the coasts to the fjords of Finnmark and Troms. The most significant is the Siberian garlic (Allium sibiricum), which grows in such abundance that farmers have to make sure their cows don’t eat too much of it or else the milk becomes garlic-flavoured. Other Siberian species to look out for are the fringed pink (Dianthus superbus) and a large, lily-like plant, the sneezewort (Veratrum album).
Fauna
The larger Arctic predators of Norway, principally the lynx, wolf, wolverine and bear, are virtually extinct, and where they have survived they are mainly confined to the more inaccessible regions of the north. To a degree this has been caused by the timber industry, which has logged out great chunks of forest. The smaller predators – the arctic fox, otter, badger and marten – have fared rather better and remain comparatively common.
In the 1930s, the beaver population had dropped to just 500 animals in southern Norway. A total ban on hunting has, however, led to a dramatic increase in their numbers, and beavers have begun to recolonize their old hunting grounds right across Scandinavia. The elk has benefited from the rolling back of the forests, grazing the newly treeless areas and breeding in sufficient numbers to allow an annual cull of around 40,000 animals; the red deer of the west coast are flourishing too. Otherwise, the Norwegians own about two million sheep and around 200,000 domesticated reindeer, most of whom are herded by the Sámi. The last wild reindeer in Europe, some 25,000 beasts, wander the Northern plateau and mountainous provinces; the largest group – some 7,000 animals – can be found on Hardangervidda. There is also a herd of musk ox in the Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella Nasjonalpark, though these prodigious beasts are not native – they were imported from Greenland in the late 1940s.
Lemmings
Among Norway’s rodents, the most interesting is the lemming, whose numbers vary over a four-year cycle. In the first three to four years there is a gradual increase, which is followed, in the course of a few months, by a sudden fall. The cause of these variations is not known, though theories are plentiful. In addition to this four-year fluctuation, the lemming population goes through a violent explosion every eleven to twelve years. Competition for food is so ferocious that many animals start to range over wide areas. In these so-called lemming years the mountains and surrounding areas teem with countless thousands of lemmings, and hundreds swarm to their deaths by falling off cliff edges and the like in a stampede of migration (though there is no truth in the idea that they commit mass suicide). In lemming years, predators and birds of prey have an abundant source of food and frequently give birth to twice as many young as normal – not surprising considering the lemmings are extremely easy to catch. More inexplicably, the snowy owl leaves its polar habitat in lemming years, flying south to join in the feast: quite how they know when to turn up is a mystery. The Vikings were particularly fascinated by lemmings, believing that they dropped from the sky during thunderstorms.
THE PUFFIN
Some 30cm tall, with a triangular, red, blue and yellow striped bill, the puffin (Fratercula arctica) is the most distinctive of the many sea birds that congregate along the Norwegian coast. It feeds on small fish, and breeds in holes it excavates in turf on cliffs or grassy flatlands, sometimes even adapting former rabbit burrows. When hunting, puffins use their wings to propel themselves underwater and, indeed, are much better at swimming than flying, finding it difficult both to get airborne and to land – collisions of one sort or another are commonplace. Their nesting habits and repetitive flight paths make them easy to catch, and puffin has long been a west-coast delicacy, though hunting them is now severely restricted. In the summer, puffins nest along the whole of the Atlantic coast from Stavanger to Nordkapp, with Værøy and Runde being two of the most likely places for a sighting. In the autumn the puffins move south, though residual winter populations remain on the southerly part of the west coast between Stavanger and Ålesund.
Birds
With the exception of the raven, the partridge and the grouse, all the mountain birds of Norway are migratory, reflecting the harshness of winter conditions. Most fly back and forth from the Mediterranean and Africa, but some winter down on the coast. Woodland species include the wood grouse, the black grouse, several different sorts of owl, woodpecker and birds of prey, while the country’s lakes and marshes are inhabited by cranes, swans, grebes, geese, ducks and many types of wader. Most dramatic of all are the coastal nesting cliffs, where millions of sea birds, such as kittiwake, guillemots, puffin, cormorant and gull, congregate. What you won’t see is the great auk, a flightless, 50cm-high bird resembling a penguin that once nested in its millions along the Atlantic seaboard but is now extinct: the last Norwegian great auk was killed in the eighteenth century and the last one of all was shot near Iceland a century later.
Fish
The waters off Norway once teemed with seals and whales, but indiscriminate hunting has drastically reduced their numbers, prompting several late-in-the-day conservation measures. The commonest species of fish – cod, haddock, coalfish and halibut – have been overexploited too, and whereas there were once gigantic shoals of them right along the coast up to the Arctic Sea, they are now much less common. The cod, like several other species, live far out in the Barents Sea, only coming to the coast to spawn, a favourite destination being the waters round the Lofoten islands.
The only fish along Norway’s coast that can survive in both salt and fresh water is the salmon, which grows to maturity in the sea and only swims upriver to spawn and die. In the following spring the young salmon return to the sea on the spring flood. Trout and char populate the rivers and lakes of western Norway, living on a diet of crustacea, which tints their meat pink, like the salmon. Eastern Norway and Finnmark are the domain of whitefish, so-called because they feed on plant remains, insects and animals, which keep their flesh white. In prehistoric times, these species migrated here from the east via what was then the freshwater Baltic; the most important of them are the perch, powan, pike and grayling.
CINEMA
For most of its short history, Norwegian cinema has been overshadowed
by its Nordic neighbours and has struggled to make any sort of impact on the
international scene. In the last decade or so, however, a group of talented
film-makers has emerged and they have been responsible for a string of stylish,
honest and refreshingly lucid films, often assisted by healthy government subsidies.
Cinema receipts speak for themselves: in 2010, Norwegian films were responsible for
23.4 percent of domestic box office sales, which was a record by some margin. For
the latest news on Norwegian cinema, consult the Norwegian Film Institute website
(
nfi.no).
1950s to the mid-1980s
Early Norwegian cinematic successes were few and far between, an exception being Kon-Tiki, a 1951 Oscar-winning documentary recording Thor Heyerdahl’s journey across the Pacific on a balsa raft (see The Kon-Tiki Museet), though the producer (and Oscar recipient) was a Swede, Olle Nordemar. In 1957, Nine Lives (Ni Liv), produced and directed by the Norwegian Arne Skouen (1913–2003), was widely acclaimed for its tale of a betrayed Resistance fighter, who managed to drag himself across northern Norway in winter to safety in neutral Sweden. Two years later Erik Løchen’s The Hunt (Jakten) was much influenced by the French New Wave in its mixture of time and space, dream and reality, as was the early work of Anja Breien (b.1940), whose Growing Up (Jostedalsrypa) relates the story of a young girl who is the sole survivor from the Black Death in a remote fjordland village. Breien followed this up in 1975 with a successful improvised comedy Wives (Hustruer), in which three former classmates meet at a school reunion and subsequently share their life experiences. Breien developed this into a trilogy with Wives Ten Years Later (Hustruer ti år efter) in 1985 and Wives III in 1996. She also garnered critical success at Cannes with Next of Kin (Arven; 1979), and won prizes at the Venice Film Festival with Witch Hunt (Forfølgelsen; 1982), an exploration of the persecution of women in the Middle Ages.
Mid-1980s to 2000
Liv Ullmann (b.1939) is easily the most famous Norwegian actor, but in Scandinavia she has worked chiefly with Swedish and Danish producers and directors, most famously Ingmar Bergman (with whom she also had a daughter). In 1995, Ullmann brought the popular Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset’s medieval epic Kristin Lavransdatter to the screen in a three-hour film that attracted mixed reviews. Another Norwegian writer to have had his work made into films is Knut Hamsun (also see Hamarøy and Norway’s National Romantic movement): in the mid-1990s, the Swedish director Jan Troell filmed the superb biographical Trial against Hamsun (Prosessen mot Hamsun), while in 1993 Oslo’s Erik Gustavson directed The Telegraphist (Telegrafisten), based on a Hamsun story. The success of The Telegraphist led to Gustavson being offered the job of bringing Jostein Gaarder’s extraordinarily popular novel Sophie’s World (Sofies Verden; 1999) to the screen.
Nils Gaup’s debut film The Pathfinder (Veiviseren; 1987), an epic adventure based on a medieval Sámi legend, was widely acclaimed both in Norway and abroad when it was released, not least because the dialogue was in the Sámi language. Gaup followed it up with a nautical adventure, Shipwrecked (Håkon Håkonsen; 1990), and then a thriller Head Above Water (Hodet over vannet; 1993), which had a pretty woeful Hollywood remake starring Cameron Diaz and Harvey Keitel. Among other Norwegian successes in the 1990s was Pål Sletaune’s Junk Mail (Budbringeren; 1997), a darkly humorous tale of an Oslo postman who opens the mail himself, and Erik Skjoldbjaerg’s Insomnia (1997), a film noir set in the permanent summer daylight of northern Norway. Stylish and compelling, it impressed Hollywood so much that it was remade in 2002 starring Al Pacino, but the newer version was a big glossy film without the grittiness of the original.
Much praised, too, were Berit Nesheim’s The Other Side of Sunday (Søndagsengler; 1996), the story of a vicar’s daughter desperate to escape from her father’s oppressive control, and Eva Isaksen’s Death at Oslo Central (Døden på Oslo S; 1990), a moving story of drug abuse and family conflict among the capital’s young down-and-outs.
2000 to 2005
In 2001, Knut Erik Jensen’s surprise hit Cool and Crazy (Heftig og Begeistret) was a gentle, lyrical documentary about the male voice choir of Berlevåg, a remote community in the far north of the country. Much to Jensen’s surprise, his film was picked up abroad and became a major hit on the art-house cinema circuit. Similarly successful was Peter Næss’s Elling (2001), a sort of tragic-comedy that relates the heart-warming/-rending story of Elling, a fastidious and obsessive ex-mental patient who moves into an Oslo flat with one of the other former patients – an odd coupling if ever there was one. Equally idiosyncratic was Bent Hamer’s Kitchen Stories (Salmer fra kjøkkenet; 2003), a comic tale in which a tester for a Swedish kitchen-design company is dispatched to Norway to study the culinary goings-on of Isak, a farmer who lives a solitary life deep in the countryside. The two become friends, but it’s a bumpy business with each having to dispense with his prejudices against the other’s nationality.
Cinematic highlights of 2005 included Sara Johnsen’s Kissed by Winter (Vinterkyss), a harrowing tale of death, racism and murder in rural Norway, and an ambitious re-working of an Ibsen play, An Enemy of the People (En folkefiende), by Erik Skjoldbjaerg, in which the contamination of the medicinal baths in a small coastal town becomes a moral barometer about who wants to admit the disaster and who wants to cover it up.
2006 to the present
In 2006, The Bothersome Man (Den brysomme mannen), directed by Jens Lien, was a hard-edged parable of a man who suddenly finds himself in an outwardly perfect, but entirely soulless world – no points for comparing this dystopia with Norway – whereas Joachim Trier’s Reprise was a playful, subtle film about love and sorrow, success and failure, creativity and friendship. The same year also saw a cracking Norwegian horror film, Roar Uthaug’s Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt), with Uthaug producing a second offering, Cold Prey 2 (Fritt Vilt II), two years later. 2008 also saw several rather more interesting productions, including Man of War (Max Manus), based on the wartime exploits of the Resistance fighter Max Manus: something of an epic, it had 1800 extras and a budget that dwarfed any other previous Norwegian film. Even more intriguing perhaps was The Kautokeino Rebellion (Kautokeino-opprøret) marking a return to cinematic form by Nils Gaup and focusing on the oppression of the Sámi by a deliciously evil Norwegian priest and merchant in Kautokeino in 1852.
The high point of 2010 was certainly André Øvredal’s The Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren), part mockumentary, part farce and part paranoid fantasy in which the Norwegian government hides the existence of trolls from the population. The film “claims”, for example, that the musk ox of the Dovrefjell were imported to feed the mountain trolls – a troll larder if you will. At time of writing, new films by Pål Sletaune and Jens Lien were in production and Headhunters (2011) was released to wide critical acclaim, much to the delight of its director Morten Tyldum, based on a searingly brutal yarn by Jo Nesbø.
BOOKS
Perhaps surprisingly, precious few travellers have written in English about the joys of journeying around Norway, though you might want to dig out a copy of a vintage Baedeker’s Norway and Sweden, if only for the phrasebook, from which you can learn such gems as the Norwegian for “Do you want to cheat me?”. Neither has Norwegian history been a major preoccupation – with the notable exception of the Vikings, who have attracted the attention of a veritable raft of historians and translators, whose works have often focused on the sagas, a rich body of work mostly written in Iceland between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Scandinavian fiction is, however, an entirely different matter, with a flood of translations appearing on the market, a literary charge led by the immaculate crime novels of the Swede, Henning Mankell, with the Norwegians following in his slipstream.
Most of the books listed here are in print and in
paperback, and those that are out of print
should be easy to track down either in secondhand bookshops or through Amazon’s used
and secondhand book service ( amazon.co.uk or amazon.com).
Note also that while we recommend all the books we’ve listed here, we do have
favourites – and these have been marked with 
.
TRAVEL AND GENERAL
Thor Heyerdahl The Kon-Tiki Expedition. You may want to read this after visiting Oslo’s Kon-Tiki Museum. Heyerdahl’s account of the Kon-Tiki expedition aroused huge interest when it was first published, and it remains a ripping yarn – though surprisingly few people care to read it today. Heyerdahl’s further exploits are related in The Ra Expeditions and The Tigris Expedition as is his long research trip to Easter Island in Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island.
Roland Huntford Scott and Amundsen: The Last Place on Earth. There are dozens of books on the polar explorers Scott, Amundsen and Nansen, but this is one of the more recent, describing with flair and panache the race to the South Pole between Scott and Amundsen. Also worth a read is the same author’s Nansen, a doorstep-sized biography of the noble explorer, academic and statesman Fridtjof Nansen.
Lucy Jago The Northern Lights: How One Man Sacrificed Love, Happiness and Sanity to Solve the Mystery of the Aurora Borealis. Intriguing biography of Kristian Birkeland, who spent years ferreting around northern Norway bent on understanding the northern lights – a quest for which he paid a heavy personal price.
Mark Kurlansky Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the
World. This wonderful book tracks the life and times of the cod
and the generations of fishermen who have lived off it. There are sections
on overfishing and the fish’s breeding habits, and recipes are provided too.
Norwegians figure frequently – after all, cod was the staple diet of much of
the country for centuries. Published in 1998.
Sven Lindqvist Bench Press. Delightful little book delving into
the nature of weight-training – and the Swedish/Scandinavian attitude to it.
Wry and perceptive cultural commentary by one of Sweden’s wittiest and most
impassioned cultural commentators. Published in 2003.
Eva Maagerø and Birte Simonsen (ed) Norway: Society and Culture. Published in 2008, this ambitious collection of essays attempts to summarize where Norway is sociologically and culturally – and where it has come from. Among much else, there are essays on the Welfare State, Religion, Literature, Art, Music and Language. Some are very good, but others are really rather pedestrian.
Trygve Mathiesen Sid’s Norwegian romance – Sex Pistols Exiled to Trondheim 1977. The curious tale of The Sex Pistols’ two-day stay in Trondheim and Sid’s tingles and tangles with a Norwegian. If you like it, try the same author’s Sex Pistols Exiled to Oslo 1977.
Christoph Ransmayr The Terrors of Ice and Darkness. Clever mingling of fact and fiction as the book’s main character follows the route of the doomed Austro-Hungarian Arctic expedition in 1873. A story of obsession and, ultimately, insanity.
Roger Took Running with Reindeer. A thoughtful account of Took’s extended visit to – and explorations of – Russia’s Kola peninsula in the 1990s, with much to say about the Sámi and their current predicaments.
Paul Watkins The Fellowship of Ghosts. Modern-day musings as Watkins travels through the mountains and fjords of southern Norway. Easy reading, but sometimes over-written – and if that doesn’t get you, the barrage of jokes probably will. There again, to be fair, there are lots of useful bits and pieces about Norway and its people.
Mary Wollstonecraft Letters written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. For reasons that have never been entirely clear, Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and mother of Mary Shelley, travelled Scandinavia for several months in 1795. Her letters home represent a real historical curiosity, though her trenchant comments on Norway often get sidelined by her intense melancholia.
HIKING AND CLIMBING
James Baxter Scandinavian Mountains and Peaks over 2000 Metres in the Hurrungane (Jotunheim). Published in 2005, this specialist text details a series of walks and climbs in the Jotunheim mountains. Detailed text with maps, but you’ll still need to invest in a proper hiking map. By the same author, and published in 2012, there’s also Norway: the Outdoor Paradise – A Ski and Kayak Odyssey in Europe’s Great Wilderness. An energetic chap, this James Baxter.
Anthony Dyer Walks and Scrambles in Norway. English-language books on Norway’s hiking trails are thin on the ground. This one describes over fifty hikes and scrambles from one end of the country to the other, though the majority are in the western fjords (as in our Chapter 4). Lots of photographs, and the text is detailed and thoroughly researched, but the maps are only general and you’ll need to buy specialist hiking ones to supplement them. Published in 2006.
Tony Howard Climbs, Scrambles and Walks in Romsdal. Originally published in 1970, but thoroughly updated and revised in 2005, this book – easily the best on its subject – explores the mighty mountains near Åndalsnes. Tips, hints and details of 300 climbs, scrambles and walks with some maps and diagrams.
Tony Howard Troll Wall. It’s 1965 and a group of climbers from the north of England are encamped at the foot of the Troll Wall near Åndalsnes. The Wall has never been climbed before – but it is now and Howard tells the tale with dramatic panache.
Bernhard Pollmann Norway – South. This Rother Walking Guide describes fifty suggested hikes in southern Norway. The descriptions are clear and concise, the photos helpful and the maps useful for preparation. The walks themselves range from the short and easy to the long and very strenuous. New, revised edition published in 2009.
GENERAL HISTORY
Jack Adams The Doomed Expedition (o/p). Thorough and well-researched account of the 1940 Allied campaign in Norway in all its brave but incompetent detail.
Martin Conway No Man’s Land. Anecdotal and entertaining account of the history of Spitsbergen (Svalbard) from 1596 to modern times. Full of intriguing detail, such as Admiral Nelson’s near-death experience (aged 14), when he set out on the ice at night to kill a polar bear. Written in 1906 and published by Kessinger in its “Legacy Reprints” series.
Fredrik Dahl Quisling: A Study in Treachery. A comprehensive
biography of the world’s most famous traitor, Vidkun Quisling, who got his
just deserts at the end of World War II. Well-written and incisive
exploration of Quisling’s complex character – and one that also sheds a grim
light on the nature and extent of Norwegian collaboration. Published by
Cambridge University Press.
Rolf Danielsen et al Norway: A History from the Vikings to Our Own Times. Thoughtful and well-presented account investigating the social and economic development of Norway – a modern and well-judged book that avoids the “kings and queens” approach to its subject, but out of print (o/p) and expensive.
Tony Griffiths Scandinavia: At War with Trolls – A Modern History from the Napoleonic Era to the Third Millennium. Engaging title for an engaging, well-written and well-researched book covering its subject in a very manageable 320 pages. First published in 2004.
Knut Helle et al The Cambridge History of Scandinavia (o/p). Comprehensive history, from the Stone Age onwards, in three whopping (and expensive) volumes. No stone is left unturned, no rune unread. Published in 2003.
David Howarth Shetland Bus. Entertaining and fascinating in
equal measure, this excellent book, written by one of the British naval
officers involved, details the clandestine wartime missions that shuttled
between the Shetlands and occupied Norway in World War II.
Chris Mann Hitler’s Arctic War. An account (2002) of the war that raged across the Arctic wastes of Norway, Finland and the USSR from 1940–45, both on sea and land.
Alan Palmer Bernadotte (o/p). Biography of Napoleon’s marshal, later King Karl Johan of Norway and Sweden, a fascinating if enigmatic figure whom this lively and comprehensive book presents to good effect.
Geoffrey Parker The Thirty Years’ War. First published in the 1980s, this book provides the authoritative account of the pan-European war that so deeply affected Scandinavia in general and Sweden in particular. Superbly written and researched.
Kathleen Stokker Folklore Fights the Nazis: Humor in Occupied Norway 1940–1945. A book that can’t help but make you laugh – and one that also provides a real insight into Norwegian society and its subtle mores. The only problem is that Stokker adopts an encyclopedic approach, which means you have to plough through the poor jokes to get to the good ones. Stokker adopted a similar approach in her comparable Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land.
Raymond Strait Queen of Ice, Queen of Shadows: The Unsuspected Life of Sonja Henie (o/p). In-depth biography of the ice-skating gold medallist, film star and conspicuous consumer Sonja Henie, whose art collection was bequeathed to the Oslo museum that bears her name (see Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter). An unpleasant woman by (almost) all accounts, whose alleged obsessions were money and sex, supposedly including affairs with Joe Louis and Tyrone Power.
THE VIKINGS, NORSE MYTHOLOGY AND FOLK TALES
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe Norwegian Folk Tales. Of all the many books on Norwegian folk tales, this is the edition you want – the illustrations by Erik Werenskiold and Theodor Kittelsen are superb. A Pantheon book published in 1991, but currently o/p.
Johannes Brøndsted The Vikings (o/p). Extremely readable account with fascinating sections on social and cultural life, art, religious beliefs and customs: see Viking customs and rituals for an extract from this book.
H.R. Ellis Davidson The Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Classic text, first published over forty years ago, that gives a who’s who of Norse mythology, including some useful reviews of the more obscure gods. Importantly, it displaced the classical deities and their world as the most relevant mythological framework for northern and western Europeans.
Robert Ferguson The Hammer and The Cross: A New History of the Vikings. The latest book on the subject written by a well-regarded Scandinavia expert – see also Enigma: the Life of Knut Hamsun. Thoroughly researched and well written.
Paddy Griffith The Viking Art of War. This detailed text examines its chosen subject well. Excellently researched with considered if sometimes surprising conclusions.
John Haywood The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings. Accessible and attractive sequence of maps charting the Vikings’ various wanderings as explorers, settlers, raiders, conquerors, traders and mercenaries. Also The Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age, an easy-to-use who’s who and what’s what of the Viking era. Published in 1996 and 2000 respectively.
Gwyn Jones A History of the Vikings. Superbly crafted,
erudite and very detailed account of the Vikings, with excellent sections on
every aspect of their history and culture. The same author wrote Scandinavian Legends and Folk Tales.
Gwyn Jones Scandinavian Legends and Folk Tales (o/p). The Oxford University Press commissioned this anthology, whose stories are drawn from every part of Scandinavia and cover many themes – from the heroic to the tragic – and are populated by a mixed crew of trolls, wolves, bears and princelings.
Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson (translators) The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. These two sagas tell of the Vikings’ settlement of Greenland and of the “discovery” of North America in the tenth century. The introduction of this particular edition, which was first published in the 1960s, is an especially interesting and acute analysis of these two colonial outposts. There’s also a newer edition in the Penguin Classics series by Leifur Ericksson (2010). See also Snorri Sturluson.
Heather O’Donoghue From Asgard to Valhalla: the Remarkable History of the Norse Myths. Well, the “remarkable” in the title may well have been dreamed up by someone in PR, as what you get here is a well-researched and detailed investigation/exploration of its subject matter. The chapters are arranged by theme – “Creation and Cosmos” and “Heroes and Humans” for example.
Else Roesdahl The Vikings. A clearly presented, 350-page exploration of Viking history and culture, including sections on art, burial customs, class divisions, jewellery, kingship, kinship and poetry. An excellent introduction to its subject.
Peter Sawyer (ed) The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings (o/p). Published in 2001, this book brings together what was then the latest historical research on the Vikings in a series of well-considered essays by leading experts. Includes sections on religion, shipbuilding and diet.
Jane Smiley et al The Sagas of Icelanders. Easy-to-read translations
of all the main sagas – galloping, rip-roaring tales from medieval Iceland.
The index makes it an excellent reference book too.
Snorri Sturluson Egil’s Saga, Laxdaela Saga, Njal’s Saga, and King Harald’s Saga. These Icelandic sagas were written in the early years of the thirteenth century, but relate tales of ninth- and tenth-century derring-do. There’s clan warfare in the Laxdaela and Njal sagas, more bloodthirstiness in Egil’s, and a bit more biography in King Harald’s, penned to celebrate one of the last and most ferocious Viking chieftains – Harald Hardrada. Among those who have worked on translating these sagas was the former UK TV celebrity Magnus Magnusson, long a leading light in the effort to popularize them; see also the Vinland Sagas and The Sagas of Icelanders.
ARCHITECTURE, FILM AND THE VISUAL ARTS
Ketil Bjørnstad The Story of Edvard Munch (o/p). Precise and detailed biography of the great artist that makes liberal use of Munch’s own letters and diaries as well as contemporary newspapers and periodicals. A vivid tale indeed, just a shame that Munch isn’t more likeable.
Angela Cheroux Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye. Published by Tate in 2012, this scholarly work fills something of an artistic hole – and benefits from an especially lavish set of illustrations. Munch revealed in all his enigmatic/unpleasant detail.
Einar Haugen and Camilla Cai Ole Bull: Norway’s Romantic Musician and Cosmopolitan Patriot. A neglected figure, Ole Bull, the nineteenth-century virtuoso violinist and utopian socialist, deserves a better historical fate. This biography attempts to rectify matters by delving into every facet of his life, but it’s ponderously written and over-detailed. For Bull lovers only.
J.P. Hodin Edvard Munch. A good general introduction to Munch’s life and work, with much interesting historical detail. Beautifully illustrated, as you would expect from a Thames & Hudson publication. Reprinted in 1991.
Neil Kent The Soul of the North: A Social, Architectural and Cultural History of the Nordic Countries 1700–1940. Immaculately illustrated, erudite chronicle of Scandinavian art and architecture during its most influential periods. Published in 2001.
Robert Layton Grieg. Clear, concise and attractively illustrated book on Norway’s greatest composer. Essential reading if you want to get to grips with the man and his times. Published in 1998.
Marion Nelson (ed) Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition. (o/p). Lavishly illustrated, specialist book discussing the whole range of folk art, from woodcarvings through to bedspreads and traditional dress. It’s particularly strong on the influence of Norwegian folk art in the US, but the text sometimes lacks focus. It’s earth-shatteringly expensive too.
Sue Prideaux Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream. Not a classic biography perhaps, but a thorough (520 pages) and well-researched trawl through the life of a man who fulfilled most of the stereotypes of the alienated and tormented (drunken) artist. Published by Yale University Press.
Tytti Soila et al Nordic National Cinemas and The
Cinema of Scandinavia. These two books are the best there is on
Scandinavian cinema in general and Norwegian cinema in particular. Published
in 1998, the first of the two has separate chapters on each of the Nordic
countries and each chapter provides a chronological overview. The second
book, published in 2005, adopts a more cinematic approach with 24 extended
essays on key Scandinavian films – and an intriguing bunch they are
too.
NORWEGIAN LITERATURE
It was Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World that brought Norwegian literature to a worldwide audience in the 1990s, though in fact the Norwegians have been mining a deep, if somewhat idiosyncratic, literary seam since the middle of the nineteenth century. From Ibsen onwards, the country’s authors – and playwrights – have been deeply influenced by Norway’s unyielding geography and stern pietism, their preoccupations often focused on anxiety and alienation. These themes also underpin many of the Norwegian crime novels that have proved so internationally popular in the last decade - with Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbø two of the big authorial names. But, to be fair, Norwegian crime has followed in the slipstream of Henning Mankell, a Swede who is undoubtedly Scandinavia’s leading crime writer, never mind what fans of Stieg Larsson say.
FICTION, DRAMA AND LITERARY BIOGRAPHY
Kjell Askildsen A Sudden Liberating Thought (o/p). Short stories,
in the Kafkaesque tradition, from one of Norway’s most uncompromisingly
modernist writers (b. 1929).
Paul Binding With Vine-Leaves in His Hair: The Role of the Artist in Ibsen’s Plays. Academic title ideal for Ibsen lovers/students.
Jens Bjørneboe The Sharks. Set at the end of the last century, this is a thrilling tale of shipwreck and mutiny by a well-known Norwegian writer (1920–76), who had an enviable reputation for challenging authoritarianism of any description. Also recommended is his darker trilogy – Moment of Freedom, The Powderhouse and The Silence – exploring the nature of cruelty and injustice. All of these titles are, however, o/p.
Johan Bojer The Emigrants (o/p). One of the leading Norwegian novelists of his day, Bojer (1872–1959) wrote extensively about the hardships of rural life. The Emigrants, perhaps his most finely crafted work, deals with a group of young Norwegians who emigrate to North Dakota in the 1880s – and the difficulties they experience. In Norway, Bojer is better known for Last of the Vikings (o/p), a heart-rending tale of fishermen from the tiny village of Rissa in Nordland, who are forced to row out to the Lofoten winter fishery, no matter what the conditions, to keep from starving. It was first published in 1921.
Lars Saabye Christensen Herman. Christensen made a real literary splash with The Half Brother, an intense tale focused on four generations of an Oslo family in the years following World War II, with the narrator being Barnum, a midget, alcoholic screenplay-writer. It is, however, a real doorstopper of a book and before you embark on such a long read you might want to sample Christensen’s Herman, a lighter (and much shorter) tale of adolescence with an Oslo backdrop.
Camilla Collett The District Governor’s Daughters. First published in 1854, this heartfelt demand for the emotional and intellectual emancipation of women is set within a bourgeois Norwegian milieu. The central character, Sophie, struggles against her conditioning and the expectations of those around her. An important, early feminist novel.
Kjell Ola Dahl Lethal Investments. Dahl’s first novel, a fast-paced and particularly well-written tale of murder and mystery, seediness and unwholesomeness, set in Oslo. Smart observations and clever dialogue plus an à la mode jaded detective, Inspector Frolich. There’s more Frolich in The Fourth Man which has the feel of a classic American noir thriller/chiller.
Thomas Enger Burned. Enger’s debut novel where the protagonist – Henning Juul – returns to work as a journalist after a domestic fire which has killed his son. Vulnerable and newly sensitive to death and loss, Juul is put to work on a crime case – with unexpected results.
Per Olov Enquist The Visit of the Royal Physician. Wonderfully
entertaining and beautifully written novel, set in the Danish court in
Copenhagen at the end of the eighteenth century – a time when Denmark
governed Norway.
Knut Faldbakken Adam’s Diary (o/p). Three former lovers describe their relationships with the same woman – an absorbing and spirited novel by one of Norway’s more talented writers, born in Hamar in 1941.
Robert Ferguson Enigma: the Life of Knut Hamsun. Detailed and well-considered biography of Norway’s most controversial writer. The same author also wrote Ibsen, an in-depth biography of the playwright.
Barry Forshaw Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime
Fiction. Right across Europe, Scandinavian crime writing has
never been more popular and this outstanding book, published in 2012,
summarizes and analyses the nature of the genre and the reasons for its
success. Includes extensive – and very apposite – quotes from the likes of
Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbø.
Karin Fossum Calling out for You; Don’t Look
Back; Black Seconds; The Caller; The Water’s
Edge. Arguably Norway’s finest crime writer, Fossum has written
a string of superb thrillers in the Inspector Sejer series – and each gives
the real flavour of contemporary Norway. These four novels are the best
place to get started – but avoid When the Devil Holds the
Candle, which is a bit of a dud. Born in Sandefjord, on the
south coast of Norway, in 1954, Fossum began her literary career with the
publication of a collection of poetry, but it was the sharp brilliance of
her crime writing which has made her famous, her taut and tight tales
gripping and unpredictable in equal measure. Refreshingly, these are
compassionate thrillers examining the motives and emotions of the murderer
and the murdered, and how some individuals become outcasts.
Jostein Gaarder Sophie’s World. Hugely popular novel that deserves all the critical praise it has garnered. Beautifully and gently written, with the puff of whimsy, it bears comparison with Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, though the subject matter here is philosophy, and there’s an engaging mystery story tucked in too. Also try Gaarder’s comparable Through A Glass Darkly and his more recent The Castle in the Pyrenees, an elaborate love story, which is – despite the title – set in Norway.
Janet Garton (ed) Contemporary Norwegian Women’s Writing.
Wide-ranging anthology, beginning with the directly political works of the
1970s and culminating in the more fantastical tales typical of the 2000s.
Fiction, drama and poetry all make an appearance and there are lots of
issues too – from prostitution and abuse through to women’s empowerment.
Published by Norvik Press ( norvikpress.com).
Knut Hamsun Hunger. Norway’s leading literary light in the 1920s and early 1930s, Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) was a writer of international acclaim until he disgraced himself by supporting Hitler – for which many Norwegians never forgave him. Of Hamsun’s many novels, it was Hunger (1890) that made his name, a trip into the psyche of an alienated and angst-ridden young writer, which shocked contemporary readers. The book was to have a seminal influence on the development of the modern novel. In the latter part of his career, Hamsun advocated a return to the soil and basic rural values. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature for one of his works from this period, Growth of the Soil, but you have to be pretty determined to plough through its metaphysical claptrap. In recent years, Hamsun has been tentatively accepted back into the Norwegian literary fold and there has been some resurgence of interest in his works; there’s also been a biographical film, Hamsun, starring Max von Sydow.
William Heinesen The Black Cauldron. It would be churlish to omit the Faroe-islander William Heinesen (1900–91), whose evocative novels delve into the subtleties of Faroese life – and thereby shed light on the related culture of western Norway. This particular book, arguably his best, is rigorously modernistic in approach and style – an intriguing, challenging read, with the circling forces of Faroese society set against the British occupation of the Faroes in World War II. If this whets your appetite, carry on with the same author’s The Tower at the Edge of the World.
Sigbjørn Holmebakk The Carriage Stone (o/p). Evil and innocence, suffering and redemption, with death lurking in the background, make this a serious and powerful novel. These themes are explored through the character of Eilif Grotteland, a Lutheran priest who loses his faith and resigns his ministry. Holmebakk (1922–81), who was a leading light in the Ban the Bomb movement, wrote several other excellent novels, but no other has ever appeared in translation.
Anne Holt 1222. The prolific Anne Holt is one of Norway’s most popular crime writers, making her debut in 1993 with the first of a series of books that starred a female cop, Hanne Wilhelmsen. 1222 is Wilhelmsen’s latest adventure.
Henrik Ibsen Four Major Plays. The key figure of Norwegian
literature, Ibsen was a social dramatist with a keen eye for hypocrisy,
repression and alienation. Ibsen’s most popular plays – primarily A Doll’s House and Hedda
Gabler – pop up in all sorts of editions, but this particular
collection, in the Oxford World Classics series, contains both these
favourites as well as Ghosts and The Master Builder. What’s more, it’s inexpensive and
translated by one of the leading Ibsen experts, James McFarlane. In print
also are several editions of Ibsen’s whole oeuvre.
Jan Kjærstad The Seducer. This remarkable novel weaves and
wanders, rambles and roams around the life of its protagonist, Jonas
Wergeland, in a series of digressions as our hero/anti-hero sits in his flat
with his murdered wife lying in an adjoining room. Mysterious and
convoluted, pensive and whimsical, it’s a truly extraordinary work that won
the Nordic Prize for Literature in 2001. Rather surprisingly, it’s currently
o/p.
Jan Kjærstad (ed) Leopard VI: The Norwegian Feeling for Real.
Promoted by the queen of Norway no less, this first-rate anthology of modern
Norwegian writers hits all the literary buttons – from boozy nights out in
Oslo to the loneliness of rural Norway and small-town envy. Contains 28
short stories plus potted biographies of all the featured writers. Published
in 2005.
Björn Larsson Long John Silver. Larsson, a veteran Swedish sailor with an extensive knowledge of eighteenth-century British sea lore, uses his specialist knowledge to great effect in this chunky but charming novel that provides an extra twist – or two – to Stevenson’s original.
Jonas Lie The Seer & Other Norwegian Stories (o/p). Part of the Norwegian literary and cultural revival of the late nineteenth century, Jonas Lie is largely forgotten today, but this collection of mystical folk tales makes for intriguing reading. It is printed alongside his first great success, the novella The Seer, in which a teacher is saved from insanity, born of ancient (pagan) superstitions, by the power of Christianity. Also Weird Tales from Northern Seas: Norwegian Legends, a collection much enjoyed by no less than Roald Dahl.
Henning Mankell Faceless Killers, Sidetracked. Cracking yarns from
Scandinavia’s leading crime writer featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander, a
shambolic and melancholic middle-aged police officer struggling to make
sense of all the evils washed up into small-town southern Sweden. Hard to
beat. The latest in the series, The Troubled Man,
may/may not be the last time we see the inspector.
Jo Nesbø The Devil’s Star; The Redbreast; The Redeemer. No-holds-barred crime fiction in the sardonic (American) style from Norway’s answer to Stieg Larsson – as Nesbø is often billed. Nesbø’s star detective, Inspector Harry Hole, is on the case. Grim/scintillating reading, depending on your tastes.
Per Petterson Out Stealing Horses. Doom and gloom, guilt and isolation deep in the Norwegian woods. Hardly cheerful fare perhaps, but stirring, unsettling stuff all the same. If you like it, try Petterson’s It’s Fine by Me, a tale of troubled adolescence set in 1970s Oslo.
Cora Sandel Alberta and Freedom, Alberta Alone, Alberta and Jacob. Set in a small town in early twentieth-century Norway, the Alberta trilogy follows the attempts of a young woman to establish an independent life/identity. Characterized by sharp insights and a wealth of contemporary detail. For more on Sandel, who lived in Tromsø as a young woman, see the Perspektivet Museum section.
Kjersti Scheen Final Curtain (o/p). Fast-paced detective story from one of the country’s most popular crime writers. Refreshingly, the detective isn’t a middle-aged man, but an Oslo-based woman.
Amalie Skram Under Observation and Lucie. Bergen’s Amalie Skram (1846–1905) married young and went through the marital mangle before turning her experiences into several novels and a commitment to women’s emancipation, including attempts to regulate prostitution. Published in 1888, Lucie was a coruscating attack on bourgeois morality in general, and male sexual hypocrisy in particular, with the eponymous heroine gradually ground down into submission. Inevitably, the novel created a huge furore.
Dag Solstad Shyness & Dignity. One of the big names of Norwegian literature, Solstad’s (b.1941) sombre tale of a middle-aged teacher’s psychological collapse is set in a dour Oslo. “What shall become of me?” he complains – yes, what indeed. Solstad’s latest novel, Professor Andersen’s Night, reprises the theme of a mid-life crisis brought on when the eponymous protagonist witnesses a murder on Christmas Eve. Isolation and alienation are given another good Norwegian airing.
Sven Somme Another Man’s Shoes. In World War II, the redoubtable Sven Somme managed to escape the clutches of the Germans and make his escape over the mountains into neutral Sweden. Sixty years later, his two daughters, now resident in England, retraced his steps as described in his memoirs – and this is the result, a combination of the original text and their comments on their own journey. The title comes from the pair of shoes left behind by Sven and (touchingly) kept by one of the families who helped him.
Sigrid Undset Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross, The Bridal Wreath, The Garland & The Mistress of Husaby. The prolific Undset (1882–1949), one of the country’s leading literary lights, could certainly churn it out. This historical series – arguably encapsulating her best work – is set in medieval Norway and has all the excitement of a pulp thriller, along with subtle plots and deft(ish) characterizations.
Helene Uri Honey Tongues A former doctor of linguistics at Oslo University, the prolific Uri is one of Norway’s most popular contemporary writers, producing everything from novels to children’s books. This particular novel exposes malevolent rivalry and manipulation between the (all-female) members of a sewing group when they go on a trip to Copenhagen.
Herbjørg Wassmo Dina’s Book: A Novel. Set in rural northern Norway
in the middle of the nineteenth century, this strange but engaging tale has
a plot centred on a powerful but tormented heroine. Dina is wilful to the
point of ruthlessness: she eliminates her husband and takes a new lover,
while the funeral is in progress elsewhere. Yet beneath her toughness is a
deep sense of betrayal: rejected as a child by her father after she
accidentally caused her mother’s death, Dina has grown up expecting
betrayal. Also Dina’s Son, again with a
nineteenth-century setting, but with intriguing sections focused on the
protagonist’s move from rural Norway to the city. Both currently o/p.
GLOSSARY OF NORWEGIAN TERMS
allting Parliament or public gathering
apotek chemist
bakke hill
bokhandel bookshop
bre glacier
bro/bru bridge
brygge quay or wharf
dal valley/dale
DNT (Den Norske Turistforening) nationwide hiking organization whose local affiliates maintain hiking paths across almost all the country.
Domkirke Cathedral
drosje taxi
E.kr AD
elv/bekk river/stream
ferje/ferge ferry
fjell/berg mountain
Flybussen Airport bus (literally “plane bus”)
F.kr BC
foss waterfall
gågate urban pedestrianized area
gate (gt.) street
Gamle byen literally “Old Town”; used wherever the old part of town has remained distinct from the rest (eg Fredrikstad). Also spelt as one word.
hav ocean
havn harbour
Hurtigbåt passenger express boat; usually a catamaran
Hurtigruten literally “quick route”, but familiar as the name of the boat service along the west coast from Bergen to Kirkenes.
hytte cottage, cabin
innsjø lake
jernbanestasjon train station
kirke/kjerke church
Kfum/kfuk Norwegian YMCA/YWCA
klokken/kl. o’clock
klippfisk salted whitefish, usually cod
moderasjon discount or price reduction
Moms or mva sales tax – applied to almost all consumables
museet museum
NAF nationwide Norwegian automobile association. Membership covers rescue and repair.
øy/øya islet
rabatt discount or price reduction
rådhus town hall
rorbu originally a simple wooden cabin built near the fishing grounds for incoming (ie non-local) fishermen. Many cabins are now used as tourist accommodation, especially in the Lofoten.
Sámi formerly called Lapps, the Sámi inhabit the northern reaches of Norway, Finland and Sweden – Lapland.
sentrum city or town centre
sjø sea
sjøhus harbourside building where the catch was sorted, salted, filleted and iced. Many are now redundant and some have been turned into tourist accommodation.
skog forest
slott castle, palace
Stavkirke Stave church
Storting Parliament
tilbud special offer
torget main town square, often home to an outdoor market; sometimes spelt Torvet
Vandrerhjem Youth hostel
vann/vatn water or lake
vei/veg/vn. road
Glossary of Norwegian motoring terminology
avgiftsvei toll road
bensinstasjon petrol station
bilutleie firma car rental agency
blyfri bensin unleaded petrol
bomstasjon toll
innkjorsel entrance
motorolje motor oil
motorvei highway
omkjonng detour
parkering parking
politi police
politistasjon police station
sykehus hospital
utkjorsel exit
Glossary of English art and architectural terms
Ambulatory Covered passage around the outer edge of the choir in the chancel of a church.
Art Deco Geometrical style of art and architecture popular in the 1930s.
Art Nouveau Style of art, architecture and design based on highly stylized vegetal forms. Particularly popular in the early part of the twentieth century.
Baroque The art and architecture of the Counter-Reformation, dating from around 1600 onwards, and distinguished by extreme ornateness, exuberance and the complex but harmonious spatial arrangement of interiors.
Classical Architectural style incorporating Greek and Roman elements – pillars, domes, colonnades, etc – at its height in the seventeenth century and revived, as Neoclassical, in the nineteenth century.
Fresco Wall painting – made durable through applying paint to wet plaster.
Gothic Architectural style of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, characterized by pointed arches, rib vaulting, flying buttresses and a general emphasis on verticality.
Misericord Ledge on a choir stall on which the occupant can be supported while standing; often carved with secular subjects (bottoms were not thought worthy of religious ones).
Nave Main body of a church.
Neoclassical Architectural style derived from Greek and Roman elements – pillars, domes, colonnades, etc – popular in Norway throughout the nineteenth century.
Renaissance Movement in art and architecture developed in fifteenth-century Italy.
Rococo Highly florid, light and graceful eighteenth-century style of architecture, painting and interior design, forming the last phase of Baroque.
Rood screen Decorative screen separating the nave from the chancel.
Romanesque Early medieval architecture distinguished by squat forms, rounded arches and naive sculpture.
Stucco Marble-based plaster used to embellish ceilings, etc.
Transept Arms of a cross-shaped church, placed at ninety degrees to nave and chancel.
Triptych Carved or painted work on three panels. Often used as an altarpiece.
Vault An arched ceiling or roof.