Norway
POPULATION 4,525,116
EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN 86 percent
OTHER PROTESTANT 2 percent
ROMAN CATHOLIC 1 percent
OTHER RELIGIONS (INCLUDING MUSLIM, JEWISH, BUDDHIST) 2 percent
NONE 9 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Kingdom of Norway is located on the western side of the rugged, mountainous Scandinavian Peninsula. It is bordered by the Norwegian and North Seas to the west, the Barents Sea to the north, and Sweden, Finland, and Russia to the east.
Norway came to Christianity rather late compared with much of the rest of Europe. Late in the Viking Age (c. 800–1050 C.E.), Anglo-Saxon Christian missionaries struggled to convert the residents from their belief in Norse gods. King Olav I (reigned 995–c. 1000), a Viking who embraced Christianity while in England, returned to Norway to Christianize his subjects. King Olav II (reigned 1015–30), later canonized Saint Olav, consolidated the whole of Norway into a single realm and converted the population to Christianity, by force when necessary, toward the end of the Viking Age. Some elements of the Norse religion persisted until Roman Catholicism established a more secure foothold.
The kingdom, weakened by economic decline and by the Black Death (1349), united with Denmark under one king in 1380. This union continued until 1814.
This page contains 201 words.
Norway article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 2,294 words
(approx. 8 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Norway Article
