Europe · The early medieval west
Kingdom of Norway
drawn on the map AD 866–1045, 1056–1401
Norwegian Kongeriket Norge. Traditionally unified by Harald Fairhair (Harald Hårfagre) around 872 (Battle of Hafrsfjord).
- Shown on the map
- AD 866–1045, 1056–1401 (2 periods)
- Peak area
- 481k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Norwegian Kongeriket Norge. Traditionally unified by Harald Fairhair (Harald Hårfagre) around 872 (Battle of Hafrsfjord). Christianization is associated with Olaf Tryggvason and especially Olaf II Haraldsson (St. Olaf), whose death at Stiklestad (1030) made him Norway's patron saint and a symbol of the realm (rex perpetuus Norvegiae). Medieval Norway ruled a North Atlantic maritime empire: Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, and the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland). It entered the Kalmar Union (1397) and then a long union with Denmark (Denmark-Norway) from 1523. By the Treaty of Kiel (1814) Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden; Norwegians resisted, adopted the liberal Eidsvoll Constitution (17 May 1814), but were forced into a personal union with Sweden (1814). That union was dissolved peacefully in 1905, when Norway became fully independent under its own king (Haakon VII).
Common questions
- What was the Kingdom of Norway?
- Norwegian Kongeriket Norge. Traditionally unified by Harald Fairhair (Harald Hårfagre) around 872 (Battle of Hafrsfjord).
- When is the Kingdom of Norway shown on the map?
- The border data draws the Kingdom of Norway AD 866–1045, 1056–1401, in 2 separate periods. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was the Kingdom of Norway?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kingdom of Norway covered about 481,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, German History in Documents and Images, national institutions such as the Swiss Federal Council and the National Museum of Denmark, and the scholarship of Peter H. Wilson and Joachim Whaley on the Holy Roman Empire. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Norway en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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