NORWAY 



42S5 



NORWAY 



Nonvay in the nineteenth century was larger 

 proportionally than that of any other Euro- 

 pean country but Ireland, and before the War 

 of the Nations it was the most thinly populated 

 of all these countries. In 1910 there were 

 2,392,698 inhabitants, of whom 18,590 were 

 Lapps and 7,172 were Finns. Almost three- 

 fourths of the people live in rural communities 

 along the coast and fiords ; there are very few in 

 the interior, and many of the high, bare moun- 

 tains are wholly uninhabited. The chief cities 

 are Christiania, the capital, Bergen, Trondhjem 

 and Stavanger. 



The Scandinavians are a religious people, and 

 Norway has the reputation of being the most 

 Christian and most Protestant country in the 

 world. The Evangelical Lutheran Church is 

 the established religious body, but all denomi- 

 nations enjoy freedom of worship. The most 

 important of the organizations outside the regu- 

 lar Church are the Methodist and Baptist. 

 There are also bodies of Mormons and Quakers, 

 and about 2,000 Roman Catholics. 



Language and Literature. The Norwegian 

 dialect spoken in the west resembles the Ice- 

 landic; that of the east is more like the Swed- 

 ish, and the language of the south is similar 

 to the Danish. Dano-Norwegian, almost pure 

 Danish, has been the business and literary 

 language of the country since the end of the 

 fourteenth century- A new language, called 

 Landsmaal, which is based on the various Nor- 

 m dialects, has recently spread over the 

 country and the movement to make it the offi- 

 cial language of Norway has had considerable 

 success. 



The literature of Norway had its beginning in 

 the saga* of the skalds, or early bards. Rem- 

 nants of these 

 songs and poems 

 are preserved in 

 the Snorra Edda 

 of Icelandic lit- 

 erature. Skaldcs- 

 pillir w a s t h o 

 greatest of the 

 <)!! Norse poets. 



,* the period LOCATION MA, 



Of union with The length of Norway fn-n. 

 rionmartr M tA_ north to south is greater than 



1814) Norway had the Mediterranean, 

 no separntc literature. The first great poet of 

 modern Norway wa H nrii \V. rgeland (1808- 

 1845). Asbjornsen and Moe were responsible 



for the revival of tli <>I<1 folk songs and popu- 

 lar ballads in the nineteenth ccntun 



To the later period of modern literature be- 

 long the greatest of Norwegian writers, the 

 poet and novelist Bjorastjerne Bjorason, and 

 the dramatist Henrik Ibsen, whose plays have 

 won international fame (see IBSEN, HENRIK; 

 BJORNSON, BJORNSTJERNE) . Among other noted 

 writers are Jonas Lie; Anna Thoresen, Camilla 

 Collet and Alexander Kielland. Norway has 

 been conspicuous in every field of modern 

 literature. 



Education. The people of Norway are gen- 

 erally well educated. Education is compulsory 

 between the ages of six and fourteen years, 

 and there is an excellent system of elementary 

 and high schools. Besides these public schools, 

 there are many communal, private, commercial, 

 agricultural and other technical schools. There 

 are six public and four private normal schools 

 and a university, the Royal Frederick? at Chris- 

 tiania. Institutions for the deaf, blind and fee- 

 ble-minded and reform schools are also main- 

 tained by the government. 



The Land. Norway is a rugged table-land, 

 the coasts of which are indented by hundreds 

 of deep and winding fiords. Lofty, snow-cov- 

 ered peaks, which shelter narrow lakes, forest- 

 clad hills and strips of green field, are numerous. 

 Galdhopiggen, rising 8,400 feet above the sea, 

 is the highest mountain of the peninsula; Glit- 

 tertind, in the central part of the country, is 

 only twenty feet lower, and Store Skagastols- 

 tind rises to an elevation of 7,861 feet. The 

 lofty plateaus, or jjclds, are covered with fields 

 of deep snow, and great glaciers creep down 

 their slopes. 



The country seemingly has two floors, the 

 upper being the rough heather-clad hills and 

 snowy mountains, inhabited only by the hunter 

 and herdsman, and the lower, the region of 

 fields, forests, roads and villages. 



Fiords. Norway's outer coast line is 1,700 

 miles in extent, but if the fringed shores of th<> 

 fiords are measured, it is 12,000 miles long 

 enough to reach halfway around the world. 

 Fiord, or fjord, is the Scandinavian name for 

 any large inlet or bay, but the term is gen- 

 erally employed to designate deep valleys 

 ered by the sea and bordered by high, precipi- 

 tous cliffs (see FIORD). Norway's coast is a 

 maze of these flooded canyons, whirh penetrate 

 far inland. On the southern coasts these alley- 

 ways of the ocean are like long, winding lakes 

 with many arms, but t<> the north they are 

 more broken, their rock walls arc more rugged 

 and their ehann. I many being below 



the floor of the ocean. The entire coast is 



