My country: Norway

The land of the Vikings...

(A monument put in the mountain ground of Hafrsfjord in Stavanger.)


(Norwegian stave church from the viking era)
...and a man named Olav den Hellige (Olav the Holy)
who slaughered any Norwegians that didn't want to become Christans.
Our old belives was Northern Mythology, in God and Godesses from Æsgard (a castle in the sky). The humans lived in the Midgaard (Midle earth), and another race called jotnene lived in Jotunheimen (the big mountains we have). Odin was the main God, he had one eye and owned a horse named Sleipner and two ravens: Hugin and Munin. The ravens were his conection to Midgard and Jotunheimen.
The Gods didn't trust jotnene at all, and one day one jotne named Loke managed to get into Æsgard and steal Tor's big hammer. Tor was furious and they had to steal it back of course.
Some bigger Gods and Godesses are: Tor (he makes the thunder roll with his hammer), Balder, Heimdal, Frigg, Frøy, Frøya, Brage, Idunn and Siv.


We are an Arctic country on the upper half of the country and it is very common to have the Norhtern Light (aurora borealis) in winter. It is absolutely amazing to see!! It dances in great colors and in a great speed over the dark sky.
No, we do not have Polar Bears on our main land, but we own a small island even farther north; Svalbard, that has Polar Bears.
We have lots of other wild animals like Brown bear, wolves, eagles, lynxs, reindeers, roes and of course MOOSES. A big atraction!

The Arctic part of our country has special seasons each summer and each winter. In the winter season the sun will never rise above the horizon at all, it is dark all day and all night long. It's okay for most northern people, but coming from normal conditions that can give you a BAD case of winter depression...

In summer it is the other way around, the sun never sets!! It's called The Midnight Sun and as you see on the picture it is above all night long. Also pretty weird when you go there and you never get tired. You think it is like 4pm and it's actually 4am!

We are world famous for our Cheese Knife and we also produce a cheese called Jarlsberg, which is also famous outside Norway these days. It's like the one in the picture, but has bigger wholes from air bubles. We use them on bread or on pizza, lasagne, toast + more.

Our national bird is called Fosserkallen and is a very pretty one you can spot in lakes diving for tiny fishes. We have about 4,8 billion people living here and our biggest export is wood from all our woods that covers most of our long country.

Most of Norway is by the ocean and we have based our livelyhood upon what we get from there. Fish is of course most comon, and we export big numbers of Salomon to Japan so they can make sushi. (Very yummy by the way.) We also have big fjords that is very rare and maybe the most spectacular you can see here. It's like "arms" or small valleys made from the ice grinding the mountains during the last ice age. That left pretty deep clefts that filled up with water from the ocean when the ice melted away. These fjords can be as deep as the mountains around them are high. That means that some of the world's biggest cruice ships are able to pass through the fjords and into the far end of the fjord. Many tourists enjoy Geirangerfjorden that way, a fjord on UNESCO's World Inheritance List.

That is Norway in a short recap.:o)