Languages of Norway
The Norwegian language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic language group. The Norwegian alphabet has three more letters than the Latin alphabet—æ, ø, and å, pronounced respectively as the vowels in bad, burn, and ball. Modern Norwegian has many dialects, but all of them, as well as the Swedish and Danish languages, are understood throughout all three of these Scandinavian countries. Until about 1850 there was only one written language, called Riksmål, or “Official Language,” which was strongly influenced by Danish during the 434-year union of the two countries. Landsmål, or “Country Language,” was then created out of the rural dialects. After a long feud, mostly urban-rural in makeup, the forms received equal status under the terms Bokmål (“Book Language”) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian), respectively. For more than four-fifths of schoolchildren, Bokmål is the main language in local schools, and it is the principal language of commerce and communications. In daily speech Bokmål is predominant in the area around Oslo and the eastern Norwegian lowland, while Nynorsk is widely spoken in the mountainous interior and along the west coast.
More than 15,000 Norwegians, mostly in scattered pockets of northern Norway, speak North Sami as a first language. A Uralic language, Sami is the official language of a number of municipalities.
Almost all educated Norwegians speak English as a second language. Indeed, so widespread is its use that some commentators have voiced concern that English may displace Norwegian in commerce and industry.
Religion
More than four-fifths of all Norwegians belong to the Evangelical Lutheran national church, the Church of Norway, which is endowed by the government. The largest groups outside this establishment are Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Lutheran Free Church members, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Methodists, and Baptists. As a result of Asian immigration, there also are small groups of Muslims and Buddhists.
Settlement patterns
Østlandet contains more than half of Norway’s population, most of whom live in the metropolitan area of the national capital, Oslo, and in the many industrial cities and urban agglomerations on both sides of Oslo Fjord. With the lion’s share of the national wealth in mining and manufacturing and the concentration of economic activity around Oslo Fjord, Østlandet has the highest average income per household of Norway’s traditional regions.
Norway has never had the agricultural villages that are common elsewhere in Europe. The more densely populated areas of the country have grown up around crossroads of transportation, from which people have moved to the cities and suburbs. Thus, there is actually little borderline between the rural and urban populations. For many years Oslo has attracted settlers from throughout the country, becoming a national melting pot surrounded by the most important agricultural and industrial districts of Norway. The coastline facing Denmark across the Skagerrak passage, stretching from Oslo Fjord to the southern tip of Norway, is densely populated and contains many small towns, coastal villages, and small farms. Centred on the city of Kristiansand, this area is sometimes set apart as a fifth region: southern Norway, or Sørlandet. In Vestlandet the industrial city of Stavanger has attracted large numbers of settlers and has continued to expand as Norway’s oil capital. Bergen, the capital of Vestlandet and Norway’s largest city from the Hanseatic period to the mid-19th century, is a centre for fish exports. Trondheim, the third largest city in Norway and for long periods the national capital, dominates Trøndelag. Tromsø is the capital of Nord-Norge and is a hub for various Arctic activities, including fishing, sealing, and petroleum exploration.
Demographic trends
Largely as a result of a significant increase in the proportion of the population over age 80, the population of Norway continued to grow slowly but steadily at the end of the 20th century. The birth rate fell slightly during the 1990s—to about half the world’s average—but so did the death rate, as life expectancy (about 75 years for men and about 81 years for women) was among the highest in Europe.
Migration from rural to urban areas slowed in the 1980s. The movement away from Nord-Norge, however, increased. At the beginning of the 21st century, about four-fifths of the population lived in towns and urban areas.
In the 2010s Norway’s small but varied population of foreign nationals (most of whom lived in urban areas) increased significantly, primarily as a result of the influx of migrants seeking to escape turmoil in Africa and the Middle East (especially the Syrian Civil War). In the late 20th century, more than half of foreign nationals in Norway had come from other European countries—primarily Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—and people from those countries, especially Sweden, continued to immigrate to Norway in the 21st century. The strict policy concerning immigrants and refugees that Norway had practiced since the 1960s became even more stringent in the 2010s, in response to the spike in arrivals of those seeking refugee status. Emigration—of such great importance in Norway in the 19th and early 20th centuries—ceased to be of any significance, although in most years there is a small net out-migration of Norwegian nationals.
Economy
The Norwegian economy is dependent largely on the fortunes of its important petroleum industry. Thus, it experienced a decline in the late 1980s as oil prices fell, but by the late 1990s it had rebounded strongly, benefiting from increased production and higher prices. In an effort to reduce economic downturns caused by drops in oil prices, the government in 1990 established the Government Petroleum Fund (renamed the Government Pension Fund Global in 2006), into which budget surpluses were deposited for investment overseas. Norway reversed its negative balance of payments, and the growth of its gross national product (GNP)—which had slowed during the 1980s—accelerated. By the late 1990s Norway’s per capita GNP was the highest in Scandinavia and among the highest in the world. The Norwegian economy remained robust into the early 21st century, and Norway fared much better than many other industrialized countries during the international financial and economic crisis that began in 2008. Nevertheless, foreign demand for non-petroleum-related Norwegian products weakened during that period, and, though not a participant in the single European currency, Norway was not immune to the pressures of the euro-zone debt crisis.
About one-fourth of Norway’s commodity imports are food and consumer goods (including motor vehicles); the rest consists of raw materials, fuels, and capital goods. The rate of reinvestment has been high in Norway for a number of years. This is reflected in the relatively steady employment in the building and construction industry. Rapid growth, however, has been registered in commercial and service occupations, as is the case in most countries with a high standard of living.
Fewer than 1 percent of the private businesses and industrial companies in Norway have more than 100 employees. Nonetheless, they account for more than two-fifths of the private industrial labour force. The smaller companies are usually family-owned, whereas most of the larger ones are joint-stock companies. Only a few larger concerns are state-owned, most notably Statoil, the state-owned petroleum industry, as well as the railways and the postal service. The state also has large ownership stakes in hydropower stations and electricity plants.