Norway is an unitary monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula plus the remote island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard. The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. It covers an area of 385,252 square kilometres, and has a population of 5,258,317 (January 2017). The country shares borders with Sweden, Finland and Russia, and the Skagerrak strait separates it from Denmark. Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea.
Its capital is Oslo, founded in 1040 as a trading place, and known as Christiania between 1624 and 1877, and as Kristiania from 1877 until 1925. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway. According to tradition, Harald Fairhair unified a large number of petty kingdoms into one in 872 after the Battle of Hafrsfjord in Stavanger, thus becoming the first king of a united Norway. From the 8th to the 10th century, the wider Scandinavian region was the source of Vikings.
Norwegian Viking explorers first discovered Iceland by accident in the 9th century when heading for the Faroe Islands, and eventually came across Vinland, known today as Newfoundland, in Canada. The Vikings from Norway were most active in the northern and western British Isles and eastern North America isles. The modern-day Irish cities of Dublin, Limerick and Waterford were founded by Norwegian settlers. Norse traditions were slowly replaced by Christian ones in the late 10th and early 11th centuries.
The Kalmar Union was a personal union that from 1397 to 1523 joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden (then including parts of Finland), and Norway (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Northern Isles). Sweden broke out of the Union in 1521, but Norway remained in a union with Denmark until 1814. Based on the respective natural resources, Denmark–Norway was in fact a very good match since Denmark supported Norway's needs for grain and food supplies, and Norway supplied Denmark with timber, metal, and fish.
In 1814, the Parliament elected Charles XIII of Sweden as king of Norway, thereby establishing again the union with Sweden, which ended peaceful in 1905, when Prince Carl of Denmark was unanimously elected king by the Norwegian Parliament (he took the name Haakon VII). Throughout the WWI, Norway was in principle a neutral country. It also proclaimed its neutrality during the WWII, but despite this, it was invaded by German forces on 9 April 1940. Since 2010, Norway has been classified as the world's most democratic country by the Democracy Index.
The rugged Norway's coastline, broken by huge fjords and thousands of islands, stretches 25,000 km and 83,000km. Much of the country is dominated by mountainous or high terrain, with a great variety of natural features caused by prehistoric glaciers and varied topography. The mainland experiences four distinct seasons, with colder winters and less precipitation inland. The northernmost part has a mostly maritime Subarctic climate, while Svalbard has an Arctic tundra climate.
About the stamp
The stamp is part of the series Tourism, issued on April 17, 2009.
• Bergensbanen (A local)
• Bergensbanen (A local)
• Stottafjorden, Meloy, Nordland (A Europe)
• Revtangen, Klepp, Rogaland (A Europe)
• The Northern Lights (A International)
• The Pot Rock (A International) - It's on the postcard 3184
References
Norway - Wikipedia
Sender: Samuel Banbosse (direct swap)
Sent from Oslo (Oslo / Norway), on 29.06.2017
Concept by Postallove; Designed by Ewa Słocińska
No comments:
Post a Comment