NOR′WAY (AS. Norwæg, Norþweg, Icel. Noregr, Norvegr, Norw., Dan., Swed. Norge, ML. Norregia, Northwagia, North Way). A long, narrow coast country of Europe on the North Atlantic, constituting with Sweden the Scandinavian Peninsula. The length of the coast around the outer belt of rocks is 1700 miles, the entire shore line, including the fiords and the large islands, being about 12,000 miles, long enough to stretch half around the globe. The country extends from latitude 57° 58′ to 71° 11′ N. Its width in the south is about 250 miles, in the northern half about 60 miles, and in Finmarken, the extreme north, a little greater. The area is 124,129 square miles—a little more than that of New Mexico. The northern coast is washed by the Arctic Ocean; Norwegian sealers sail every year as far north as it is open. On the south the Skagerrak, connecting the North Sea with the Cattegat, separates Norway from Jutland. Toward the east Norway has a land frontier 1500 miles long, being bordered by the Russian Government of Archangel for about 50 miles, by Finland for nearly 500 miles, and by Sweden for 950 miles. The eastern boundary extends most of the way in the midst of a belt of desolate plateau land through which the boundary with Russia was defined only in 1826 and with Sweden in 1751. At three places, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, the Trondhjem depression, and farther south, complete land connections have been made by means of railroads across the peninsula. Two-thirds of the people live in the south.
The coasts are remarkable as a
region of fiords. The shore line is everywhere
broken by deep incisions of the sea into the rocky
cliffs. Traces of the glacial period are found all
over the land, and the fiords and islands fronting
them are ascribed to the work of glaciers. Norway
as a whole is a rugged plateau, with deep-cut
valleys, the whole surface greatly denuded, peaks and groups of peaks rising, here and there, above the general level of the more plain-like region of the east. In the west, near the sea, are very ancient mountains worn down and rounded by denudation, and chiefly composed of hard igneous rocks that have better withstood the destructive forces which leveled the eastern districts to a plain.
In the southeast and the middle north (mainly
north of Trondhjem) is the woodland rising to an
average height of from 300 to 1500 feet, with
forest-clad hillsides from which Norway's lumber
is derived. The highland begins in the southwest
with a width of 60 miles, and a plateau
height which soon reaches 3000 feet, merging
finally into the wide waste through which the
eastern boundary passes. In the extreme west
geographers distinguish three mountain ranges—the
Langfjeld in the south, the Dovrefjeld
between the northern and southern districts, and
the Kjölen between Norway and Sweden farther
north.
The height axis is not far
from the west coast, and the western rivers therefore
are short, although their volume of water is
large on account of the heavy rainfall. The
eastern rivers flow along fairly regular parallel
valleys, which are open and flat in the mountains, but are cut deep through the plateau. A few of the eastern fluvial basins are large, that of the Glommen being 16,000 square miles, that of the Drammen 6600 square miles, and that of the Skien 4250 square miles, but the volume of water is comparatively small on account of the smaller rainfall. The slope is great and the rivers are filled with falls and rapids, which impart great beauty, but prevent navigation. The mountain highland and woodland are dotted with an enormous number of lakes, most of them narrow and long, due to the intense action of glaciers. It is supposed that in the great glacial period the inland ice must have extended even above the highest peaks. Most of the larger lakes are found in the long valleys—the largest of them, Mjösen (140 square miles, 60 miles long, 1500 feet deep), Randsfjord. Spirilen, Kröderen, and others, lying at a height of about 400 feet above the sea just outside the border of the highland in the east country.