The name “Norway” means “path to the North” Norway is the world’s largest exporter of salmon Europe's biggest herd of wild reindeer lives in Norway Dublin, Ireland, was actually founded by Norwegians in the year 836 If Norway was flipped upside down on the map of Europe, it would reach Rome, Italy. Currently there are more Norwegian descendants living in the USA than there are Norwegians in Norway. Norway is the birthplace of modern skiing. The word “ski” is Norwegian for “piece of wood” The national symbol is a rather exotic animal, the lion.
The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is held annually in Oslo The Oslo Opera House opened in 2008 on the waterfront in the city center. The building has a sloping marble roof that visitors can walk on, providing sweeping views of Oslo’s skyline and the Oslo Fjord. It’s completely free and the views are great. According to oficial government figures, 25% were of the city’s population were born elsewhere and an additional 7.8% were born to immigrant parents. Most of the city’s population with an immigrant background come from Pakistan, followed by Poland, Sweden and Somalia. So it's perhaps no surprise then that the capital city Oslo is the city in the world with the biggest percentage of electric car users. More than 50,000 registered all-electric vehicles are in use on the city's streets. Around 60% of Oslo's residents hold a university degree Oslo has consistently ranked as one of the world’s most expensive cities
Every year since 1947, Oslo has given London its Trafalgar Square Christmas tree as a thank you gift for the UK's support during World War II. The city has also given Reykjavik one annually since 1951. But in 2014, Fabian Stang, who was then the mayor of Oslo, said they would no longer be gifting a tree to the Icelandic capital because of the high costs involved. After then, mayor of Reykjavik said Reykjavik would pay, the tradition was reinstated without a break.
Despite the fact that the nearest wild tigers are thousands of miles away, Oslo is known as Tigerstaden, or the Tiger City. The most agreed-upon reason is that the Norwegian poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson described a fight between a horse and a tiger in his 1870 poem ‘SidsteSang’. The tiger represented the dangerous city and the horse the safe countryside. City bosses now say Oslo is not dangerous like a tiger, but ‘happening and exciting’.
The Scream depicts the vantage point from the hill top of Oslo’s Ekeberg neighborhood, with the fjord, town, and hills below.
Oslo has always been called as Oslo since the Middle Ages (where it probably have originated from “Anslo” or “Aslo”). But there was a 300-year period in its history when it wasn’t called as such. After a fire ravaged the original settlement, King Christian IV of Denmark ordered another city to be built across the bay, which he named Christiania- after his own name. However, in 1925, people were questioning the idea of having a Norwegian city being named after a Danish king, so the original name of Oslo was restored
Norway has two oficial written languages: Bokmål and Nynorsk. But for 434 years, from 1380 until 1814, they were in a union with, and at times ruled by the Danes, something that affected the written language in particular but also how people spoke. That's why Norwegians wrote in Danish in the 1800s! In 1814, Norway broke away from Denmark, and they got their own constitution. Newly liberated, people also wanted a written language that sounded more like the way they actually spoke. Nynorsk is most prevalent in the western part of the country, though, while Bokmål is most prominent in the east.