Norway , [ a ] officially the Kingdom of Norway , [ b ] is a Nordic country in Northern Europe , situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula , with a population of 5. The capital and largest city in Norway is Oslo. Norway has a total area of , square kilometres , sq mi. The unified kingdom of Norway was established in as a merger of petty kingdoms and has existed continuously for 1,β1, years.
From to , Norway was part of DenmarkβNorway , and, from to , it was in a personal union with Sweden. As a unitary state with a constitutional monarchy , Norway divides state power between the parliament , the cabinet , and the supreme court , as determined by the constitution.
Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels: counties and municipalities. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States. The Norwegian dialects share mutual intelligibility with Danish and Swedish. Norway maintains the Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system, and its values are rooted in egalitarian ideals. The petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's gross domestic product GDP.
There is some disagreement about whether the native name of Norway originally had the same etymology as the English form. The earliest traces of human occupation in Norway are found along the coast, where the huge ice shelf of the last ice age first melted between 11, and BC. The oldest finds are stone tools dating from to BC, discovered in Finnmark Komsa culture in the north and Rogaland Fosna culture in the southwest. Theories about the two cultures being separate were deemed obsolete in the s.
They were Indo-European farmers who grew grain and kept livestock, and gradually replaced the hunting-fishing population of the west coast. From about BC, bronze was gradually introduced. Burial cairns built close to the sea as far north as Harstad and also inland in the south are characteristic of this period, with rock carving motifs that differ from those of the Stone Age , depicting ships resembling the Hjortspring boat , while large stone burial monuments known as stone ships were also erected.
