Norway

Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, holds the western and northern rim of Scandinavia with Jan Mayen and Svalbard in the Arctic besides, three hundred and eighty-five thousand square kilometres and five and a half million people round the capital Oslo, fjords facing the North and Norwegian Seas. Vikings unified petty kingdoms in 872; Christianity, the Black Death, and the Kalmar Union passed, and Denmark held Norway from 1537 while its timber, fish and sailors served Copenhagen. In 1814 Norwegians wrote the Eidsvoll constitution and chose a king for one summer before Sweden took the crown into a century-long personal union. The Storting built railways, schools and a merchant fleet under the union; plebiscite ended it in 1905 and Haakon VII landed. Neutral in the first war, invaded in April 1940, the government fled to London while teachers, priests and ships resisted; liberation in 1945 left the oil still underground and the constitution untouched.