Norway

Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway (Norwegian: Kongeriket Norge), is a country and constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. It is bordered by Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The distance between the northern and southern parts of Norway is considerable compared to east-west distances. The country's extensive coastline along the North Atlantic Ocean is home to its famous fjords. Norway is one of the most developed countries in the world. Like other Scandinavian countries, it contains a mixed economy featuring both a private free market and a powerful government sector which partially owns many major industries and operates a comprehensive welfare state. After retaining a neutral foreign policy for several centuries, it was invaded by Nazi Germany during World War II and became a founding member of NATO during the Cold War. However, it voted against entering the European Union. Its current head of state is Harald V of Norway, and its current head of government is Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

Quotes

Norway would have been better off inside the EU.
- The Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Erna Solberg, would have liked Norway to have full membership, quoted in The Globe and Mail, "Norway’s deal with EU could be a model for Britain", March 17, 2016.

For many generations, Norway, with its homely, rugged population engaged in trade, shipping, fishing, and agriculture, had stood outside the turmoil of world politics. Far off were the days when the Vikings had sallied forth to conquer or ravage a large part of the then-known world. The Hundred Years' War, the Thirty Years' War, the wars of William III and Marlborough, the Napoleonic convulsion, and later conflicts had left Norway―though separated from Denmark―unmoved and unscathed. A large proportion of the people had hitherto thought of neutrality and neutrality alone. A tiny army and a population with no desires except to live peaceably in their own mountainous and semi-Arctic country now fell victims to the new German aggression.
- Winston Churchill, The Second World War Volume I: The Gathering Storm (1948)

I have to say that everybody from David Cameron to half this panel say, "Wouldn't it be terrible if we were like Norway and Switzerland?" Really? They're rich. They're happy. They're self governing.
- Nigel Farage, Speaking on BBC Question Time in Lincoln, 17 January 2013.

[...] and you, my compatriots in Norway, have no grounds for complaining that we have forgotten the dear, familiar and specific character with which God has endowed our land and our nation. That is so firmly entrenched in our being that it finds expression, whether we like it or not. Do not, therefore, insult us further with such [an accusation]; it hurts our feelings, and thereby proves how unfounded it is, for otherwise it would be easy to treat it with indifference.
- Hans Gude, Reported in Frode Haverkamp. Hans Fredrik Gude: From National Romanticism to Realism in Landscape, trans. Joan Fuglesang (in Norwegian).

We have been given an assignment as a monarchy, and we do as well as we can … We try to be as little populistic as possible. We don't do anything on the spur of the moment to win an opinion poll, or short-term popularity.
- Harald V of Norway, interview in Wenche Fuglehaug (November 21, 2005). "Norway's monarchy turns 100", Aftenposten, Aftenposten Multimedia A/S, Oslo, Norway.

Yesterday, on the 17th of May, we Norwegians celebrated our constitution day to mark the signing of Norway's constitution in 1814. Maybe it is because we are a small country: In Norway this is an important day. All over Norway children have paraded in their best clothes to the music of thousands of marching bands, and countless speeches have been made to remind each others, as fellow Norwegians, that freedom should never be taken for granted.
- Andreas Heldal-Lund, Award Winner's Speech, Leipzig Human Rights Award, 2003 Leipzig Human Rights Award of the European-American Citizens Committee for Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the USA, (May 18, 2003).

The Soviet leaders have always disliked and feared the North Atlantic Alliance, and all that it stands for. They did their utmost to prevent it being born. You will remember that just as your distinguished Foreign Minister Mr. Lange was about to leave Oslo for Washington to enquire about the North Atlantic Treaty, a Note was received from the Soviet Government inviting Norway to conclude a non-aggression pact with them. Norway made her choice. She declined the Russian offer; and on the 3rd March, 1949 decided to join the Atlantic Alliance, while making it clear that she would not allow armed forces of foreign powers to be stationed in Norway so long as the country had not been attacked or threatened with attack. Thus the Soviet failed to prevent the Treaty being signed, but this did not deter them from trying to prevent the Alliance being extended or strengthened. When there was a question of Greece and Turkey joining the Alliance, the Soviet did their utmost by a mixture of blandishment and threats to prevent their doing so. Two years ago they took exactly the same line when the question of the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany was under consideration.
- Hastings Ismay, Speech to the Norwegian Atlantic Committee in Oslo, 15 May 1956

The Northmen are often said to have burst out of their coastal settlements in what is now Sweden, Norway, and Denmark at the end of the eighth century. The most famous account of their arrival into the Christian realms of the west comes from Britain. In 793 warriors appeared off the coast of Northumbria, leaped from their ships, and robbed the island of Lindisfarne, desecrating the monastery and murdering its brothers. This ferocious raid sent shock waves rippling out from Britain. When the news reached Charlemagne’s court in Aachen, Alcuin of York wrote to the king of Northumbria, deploring the fact that “the church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans.” He suggested to the king that he and his noblemen might mend their ways, starting by adopting more Christian haircuts and clothing styles. But it was too late for any of that. The Northmen had announced themselves as a major power in the western world. The next year, 794, raiders appeared on the other side of the British Isles, in the Hebrides. In 799 Vikings raided the monastery of Saint-Philibert at Noirmoutier, just to the south of the river Loire. Sixty years later Viking raids would be a painful feature of life not only in the North and Irish Seas but as far away as Lisbon, Seville, and north Africa, as Northmen tangled with Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Umayyads, and Franks. In 860 a band of Viking-descended warriors from what is now northwest Russia even sailed to Constantinople via the river Dnieper and the Black Sea, and laid the city under siege. Although exposed only to a tiny part of this, the chronicler of Noirmoutier wrote what could have been an epigram for the entire age: “The number of ships grows, the endless stream of Vikings never ceases to increase . . . the Vikings conquer everything in their path and nothing resists them.”
- Dan Jones, Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021).

Americans reflexively believe that 'Had Germany occupied the United States, nearly all of us would have joined an armed resistance to the Nazis. That's what I thought, too, when I was 16. But that reflects a hopelessly naive view, both of what the world looked like to most people after the Nazis had conquered Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and France, and of what it actually meant to take up arms against an occupying power'.
- Charles Kaiser, "What Americans forget about French resistance" (7 May 2015), Cable News Network, Atlanta, Georgia.

We talk about the people who came to Russia with an intention either to work or to visit relatives. They had not declared that their real purpose of the visit was to flee to Norway. This means that they had deliberately provided false information about the purpose of their visit to Russia. This is why we do not want to take these people back.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on deported refugees from Norway travelling to Russia, quoted on The Nordic Page, "Russia Will Not Accept Deported Refugees from Norway", January 26, 2016.

The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on.
- Mairead Maguire in The Disturbing Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex, Common Dreams, (14 October 2014)

If there is anyone who still wonders why this war is being fought, let him look to Norway. If there is anyone who has any delusions that this war could have been averted, let him look to Norway; and if there is anyone who doubts the democratic will to win, again I say, let him look to Norway.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Look to Norway" speech (1942), reported in American Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (1976). The American Federationist, Page 24, v.48-49 1941-1942.

We have a high standard of living. … In Norway, we've tripled our income since 1970. In the rest of western Europe, income has merely doubled.
- Jens Stoltenberg, interview in Torgrim Eggen (2001). "At the Top: An interview with Jens Stoltenberg", Scanorama.

Surely even the most vehement of ideologues couldn't find anything wrong with Norway?
- Catherine Webb, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (2014), Chapter 63

Harald V of Norway, Garden party in the Palace Park: welcoming speech (September 1, 2016)

Harald V of Norway, Garden party in the Palace Park: welcoming speech [1] (September 1, 2016)

So what is Norway?
Norway is high mountains and deep fjords. It is wide open spaces and rocky coastlines. It is islands and archipelagos. It is lush farmland and rolling moors.
The sea laps Norway’s shores in the north, west and south.
Norway is midnight sun and polar night. It is harsh winters and mild winters. It is hot summers and cold summers.
Norway is a long and sparsely populated country.
But above all, Norway is its people.
Norwegians come from North Norway, Central Norway, Southern Norway – and all of the other regions. Norwegians have immigrated from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland, from Sweden, Somalia and Syria. My grandparents came here from Denmark and England 110 years ago.
Norwegians believe in God, Allah, the Universe and nothing.
Norway is you. Norway is us.
My greatest hope for Norway is that we will be able to take care of one another. That we will continue to build this country – on a foundation of trust, fellowship and generosity of spirit. That we will feel that we are – despite our differences – one people. That Norway is one.

Attributed

Norway did not even have a revolution at the time the rest of Europe was busy figuring out human rights and stuff, because we were busy fighting over how to spell it.
- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp

[...] and you, my compatriots in Norway, have no grounds for complaining that we have forgotten the dear, familiar and specific character with which God has endowed our land and our nation. That is so firmly entrenched in our being that it finds expression, whether we like it or not. Do not, therefore, insult us further with such [an accusation]; it hurts our feelings, and thereby proves how unfounded it is, for otherwise it would be easy to treat it with indifference.
- Hans Gude, reported in Frode Haverkamp. Hans Fredrik Gude: From National Romanticism to Realism in Landscape, trans. Joan Fuglesang (in Norwegian).

Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!
- Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1791), July 6, 1763, p. 120 (Vol. 1)