Page 621 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Europe

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NORWAY

Norway’s great attraction is the grandeur of its scenery. The landscape is one
of dramatic contrasts: great mountain ranges, sheer river valleys, mighty
glaciers, deep green forests, and the spectacular fjords that indent the western
coast. In the far north, above the Arctic Circle, visitors can marvel at the
Northern Lights and the long summer nights of the Land of the Midnight Sun.
The fjords that make the coastline of follow the nomadic life of their forefathers
Norway one of the most jagged in the but the majority now live and work in
world were carved by glaciers during the much the same way as Norwegians.
last Ice Age. As the glaciers began to
recede about 12,000 years ago, the sea History
level rose and seawater flooded back to It is for the Viking Age (c.800–1050) that
fill the deep, eroded valleys. Norway’s Norway is best known. As a result of
extraordinary geography has had a great overpopulation and clan warfare, the
influence on its people and development. Norwegian Vikings traveled to find new
In the past, scarcity of agricultural land led lands. They mostly sailed west, their
to economic dependence on the sea. longships reaching the British Isles,
In contrast, Norway today has abundant Iceland, Greenland, and even America.
hydro electric power as well as rich oil and The raiders soon became settlers and
gas deposits on its continental shelf. those who remained at home benefited
The first settlers arrived 10,000 years ago both from the spoils of war and the fact
as the Scandinavian icesheets retreated. that farmland was no longer in such
They were hunters of reindeer, deer, bears, short supply. The country was united by
and fish. By the Bronze Age (1500–500 BC), Harald the Fairhaired in the 9th century.
rock carvings show that these early This great age of expansion, however,
Norwegians had learnt to ski. Other effectively ended in 1066, when King
inhabitants of the region were the Sami Harald Hardråde was defeated at the
(formerly known as the Lapps), with battle of Stamford Bridge in England.
origins in the northern regions of Russia, The 11th and 12th centuries were
Finland, Sweden, and Norway, where they marked by dynastic conflicts and the
haved lived for thousands of years by rising influence of the church. In 1217,
fishing and herding reindeer. Some still Haakon IV came to power, ushering in a

The harbor at Bergen, the main center for tours of Norway’s fjords
View over Lake Ringedalsvatnet, with the rock of Trolltunga (the troll’s tongue) in the foreground

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