History at Glance

Norway, the long Atlantic coast between the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean, was settled by hunters as soon as the ice withdrew, about 9500 BCE; the rock carvings of Alta and the Bøla reindeer record their world. Farming reached the Oslofjord about 4000 BCE, bronze and then iron followed, and in the Iron Age chieftains ruled from great halls in the south while the Sámi hunted, fished and trapped in the north.

From the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 Norwegian Vikings sailed west to Shetland, Orkney, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland and North America. Saga tradition makes Harald Fairhair the first king of all Norway after Hafrsfjord, traditionally dated 872; Olaf Tryggvason and Saint Olaf brought Christianity, and after a century of civil wars Haakon IV ruled a realm stretching from Greenland to Bohuslän.

The Black Death of 1349 and the end of the old royal line drew Norway into unions with Sweden and Denmark. From 1537 it was ruled from Copenhagen as part of Denmark–Norway, a Lutheran kingdom that kept its own laws but lost Jämtland, Härjedalen and Bohuslän to Sweden. In 1814 Norway refused to be handed over to Sweden, adopted the Eidsvoll Constitution on 17 May and entered a union with Sweden as a separate state, which the Storting dissolved peacefully in 1905.

The independent kingdom of Haakon VII explored the poles, stayed neutral in the First World War and was occupied by Germany from 1940 to 1945, while the King and government fought on from London. After the war Norway joined NATO, built a welfare state, found oil in the North Sea in 1969 and twice voted against joining Europe. King Harald V died in August 2026 and was succeeded by his son, Haakon VIII. Explore the ten ages below through selected events from the timeline.