Norway
Discover Norway
Introduction
Norway occupies the western edge of Scandinavia, a country roughly 1,750 kilometres long whose coastline, counted with its fjords and some 240,000 islands, runs to over 100,000 kilometres — one of the longest of any nation.
The fjords are glacial valleys drowned by the sea: Sognefjord runs 205 kilometres inland and over 1,300 metres deep. That geography is why road distances bear little relation to map distances, and why ferries and tunnels are ordinary infrastructure here.
A third of the country lies above the Arctic Circle, where the sun does not set for weeks in summer and does not rise for weeks in winter.
Oil found in the North Sea in 1969 transformed a comparatively poor fishing nation into one of the wealthiest countries in the world, which explains both the infrastructure and the prices.