One of the last West-European countries to become independent in 1905 was the kingdom of Norway. It did have a Norwegian king in the 10th century but afterwards the country belonged to the kingdom of Denmark until 1813 and then to Sweden. During World War I, Norway was neutral, in World War II Germany occupied the country. The king emigrated to London and from there he supported the resistance against the German occupation.

The Norwegian language has two forms: "Nynorks" is  the spoken language that developed from the Old Norwegian language and is interspersed with rural dialects; "Bokmal" is borrowed from the Danish language and prevalent today. In 1992 the Finno-Ugric language of the Sami (Laplanders) was also officially acknowledged. The Norwegians like to read - 5000 new books are published every year, two thirds of them in Norwegian. That is an unusually high book production in relation to the number of Norwegians.

Norway is thought of as the cradle of ski sports. From cave paintings and prehistoric finds one can draw the conclusion that even more than 4000 years ago people used skis. Only in the 19th century the sport - unknown everywhere but Norway - caught on worldwide. Norwegian emigrants introduced skiing to the United States.

Since 1949 Norway is a member of the NATO. The population decided against Norway's membership in the EU with two plebiscites in 1972 and 1994. Economic prosperity is owed to offshore deposits of natural gas and petroleum extracted since the early seventies along the south coast. Fishing and forestry are traditionally important industries.