According to ehistorylib, in 2005, Norway had an estimated population of 4.6 million people with a population growth rate of 0.8%. The economy in 2005 was largely based on the export of oil and natural gas, with major exports including petroleum, fish, metals, and chemicals. Foreign relations in 2005 were mainly focused on maintaining strong ties to neighboring countries while also participating in international organizations such as the United Nations and NATO. The politics of Norway in 2005 were dominated by Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik who had been elected to office in 2001 after a general election which was considered by international observers to be generally free and fair. Bondevik’s government implemented major economic reforms aimed at improving living standards for all citizens as well as encouraging foreign investment. Despite this, the country was facing significant issues related to poverty and inequality that needed to be addressed.
Yearbook 2005
Norway. Also in 2005, there was conflict over the Kurdish Islamist mulla Krekar, who has long had asylum in Norway but who has been accused of terror in Iraq. The government decided to expel Krekar, who was appealing but lost in court, with regard to the security of the state. However, the government did not consider that the deportation could be enforced before there were guarantees that Krekar was not threatened by the death penalty in Iraq. However, Progress Party leader Carl I. According to countryaah, Oslo is the capital and one of the major cities within the country of Norway. Hagen demanded an immediate deportation and said he was more concerned about the security of the Norwegians than for Krekar’s security in Iraq.
- Also see abbreviationfinder.org for how the acronym NO stands for the country of Norway and other meanings of this two-letter abbreviation.
In March, warnings came that the Norwegian economy was about to overheat. An extended period of high oil prices had led to sharply increased investments in the oil and gas industry. Three large gas fields were under development at the same time: Snøhvit north of the Northern Cape, Ormen Lange southwest of Trondheim and the Kristin field between Stavanger and Bergen. The record high oil prices led to the State Petroleum Fund having grown to NOK 1,280 billion after the third quarter of the year.
During the year, the 100th anniversary was celebrated by N’s independence and the union resolution between Norway and Sweden. The prime ministers of both countries attended the national day celebration on May 17 in Eidsvoll, and King Harald and King Carl Gustaf jointly opened the new border bridge at Svinesund in June.
In July, the government presented a report on the so-called German children, usually children of a German soldier and a Norwegian woman during the Second World War. Many of these were taken from their mothers to foster homes where abuse was common. The government now proposed SEK 20,000 in compensation for every child of war who suffered from the suffering of society.
Before the Storting elections in September, Norway had gained a new political alliance consisting of the Labor Party (Labor Party), Socialist Left Party (SV) and the Center Party (SP). The Labor Party, drawn with internal fragmentation in recent years, now emerged as a united party behind leader Jens Stoltenberg and advocated a more traditional social democratic policy than in the 2001 election.
For the fifth year in a row, Norway was ranked by the United Nations Development Program UNDP as the world’s best country to live in, yet the electoral movement was largely about shortcomings in welfare. Stoltenberg accused the bourgeois government of neglecting the care of the elderly and prioritizing tax cuts instead.
The election was a victory for the new red-green alliance, which together received 87 of the parliament’s 169 seats. Ap increased from 43 to 61 mandates, Sp increased by a mandate to 11, while SV declined from 23 to 15.
The bourgeois minority government under Kjell Magne Bondevik suffered a major defeat and decreased from 62 to 44 seats. In the election campaign, Bondevik rejected demands from the Progress Party (Frp) on government cooperation and was therefore fiercely attacked by Frp leader Carl I. Hagen. In the election, Frp became the second largest party, with an increase from 26 to 38 seats.
The new red-green tripartite coalition came into being in October with Jens Stoltenberg (Ap) as prime minister, SV leader Kristin Halvorsen as finance minister and Sp leader Åslaug Haga as municipal and regional minister. Foreign Minister became Jonas Gahr Støre (Ap). For the first time in two decades, Norway had won a majority government.
Geography and settlement
The real urbanization in Norway is due neither to agriculture nor to fishing, but to forestry, the third of the traditional primary industries. From the 1500s, timber exports became the most important extroverted trade next to the fish trade. While the fish trade had previously provided growth conditions for a single city – Bergen – the timber trade from an early age provided the basis for an entire chain of urban communities along the Norwegian coast. Inland, in addition to the two or three traditional mining towns, urban formations were few, and they were linked to the transport of timber through lakes and streams.
The industry that broke through in the second half of the 19th century brought about a few significant changes in the settlement pattern that the primary trades had created. Until about 1905, the industry was placed in the existing urban areas – although not in all: The smaller wooden cargo and sailing ship towns declined relatively during the strong urbanization of the country after 1870. – or undeveloped areas – Odda, Sauda, Rjukan – but also for enhanced urbanization of the established urban areas – Oslo, Bergen, Skien, Trondheim.
In summary, it can therefore be stated that the physical distribution of humans over the Norwegian land is predominantly determined by the farming conditions in a cold but rainy country. Alongside the proliferation of agriculture, trade based on fish and especially on timber has for many centuries provided the basis for some urbanization along the west and south coasts.
Alongside the business foundation, communication opportunities have played a role for the settlement. In Norway, people traditionally live if it is otherwise possible by the sea – obviously due to transport. The railroad was introduced as a means of transport in the 1850s, and broke through as a national means of transport from the 1870s. It probably led to urban formations in the form of «station towns» along the inland railways, but even during the railway’s sheer period up to approx. By 1920, it was predominantly other factors affecting settlement. It was initially the transition from sails to steam power in shipping, and to some extent the factory production, which broke through for three periods: 1870-80, 1890-95 and 1905-16 – the last most powerful. An urban base like the one in Narvik, where the railway is the economic nerve, is one of the exceptions in Norway.
The further development of transport seems to have affected the settlement in two ways. In part, it has strengthened the opportunities for scattered settlement, which, since the 1930s, the grid network strengthened agriculture by introducing milk routes, which made farmers’ main product more marketable. In part, since the 1960s, the private car has made daily and weekly commuting possible over long distances, slowing down an even stronger concentration of the settlement than the one that would otherwise have taken place.
The labor market has also affected the settlement in the country. People have at all times moved away from underemployment and where there was work to get. In the period from 1815 to 1965, the population of Norway doubled. But the national labor market could not absorb everyone, and nearly a million Norwegians moved across the ocean to America. Moving to and from abroad is of little importance today for settlement and population development.
| 1952 | 1977 | |
| Maritime transport | ||
| Car ferries | 55 | 310 |
| Second scheduled service | 452 | 395 |
| Rail Transport | ||
| Railways | 1526 | 1892 |
| Tramways / suburban lanes | 589 | 485 |
| Road transport | ||
| Coaches | 1847 | 3916 |
| Droscher etc. | 291 | 494 |
| Passenger cars | 1584 | 30491 |
| Motorcycles etc. | 171 | 596 |
| Aviation | 9 | 1225 |
| Total domestic passenger transport | 6524 | 39804 |
| Passenger transport in millions of kilometers per person. year. Source: Department of Transport Economics. |
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In the years following World War II, there has been greater demand in the country than labor supply. But the labor demand has been geographically unevenly distributed, with the greatest concentration in the areas around the Oslo, Trondheim, Kristiansand, Bergen and Stavanger districts. Northern Norway, parts of Trøndelag and the inner parts of southern Norway, on the other hand, had surplus labor. This has resulted in very unequal population growth in the different parts of the country. In the early 1950s, the five metropolitan regions accounted for 42.5% of total population growth; Ten years later for a full 67%.
The relocation took place in particular from Northern Norway, Trøndelag outside Trondheim, as well as from the mountain and fjord settlements in Southern Norway, and in this way the population was concentrated on a small part of the area in line with the structural changes in Norwegian working life from labor-intensive agriculture, fisheries and shipping., for large industry and service industries.
This restructuring of the population and thus of the settlement is a central feature of the post-war period. Yet the Norwegians moved far more before – measured in net migration across county boundaries. Only during the crisis and occupation years 1931-46 was the migration figure lower: 1 per year. 1000 residents, against just over 2 in the 1960s and 70s. Immediately before the turn of the century, the figure was 8 percent. 1000 residents.
Norway’s topographical features, with a longitudinal axis that is worthy of a European great power and a width corresponding to Jutland, have had many other consequences than just for business and settlement. Culturally, the country is characterized by regionalism, which strongly modifies the impression of a homogeneous nation. The cultural characteristics of the regions are in themselves hardly greater than in other countries, but they have a significant impact on the size of the country. The Norwegian language dispute is an expression of this. Likewise the administrative distance between «Oslo» and the rest of the country. The relationship between Northern and Southern Norway is characteristic of these differences. It has always been characterized by a basic and insurmountable distance. The only place where Norwegian military planning has traditionally operated with a possible “demarcation line” in war and hostile occupation, is between these two regions. Also in today’s Norwegian military thinking, the northern counties stand out as a special area – an Achilles heel – which regularly surprises foreign strategists.
In addition to the traditional administrative and geographical distance between southern and northern Norway, the cultural distance is expressed in the public treatment of the Sami population, which is highly discriminatory and has followed an assimilation line for generations. Every part of Norwegian administration and politics, from church and school to defense and census, has traditionally been oriented towards obliterating or overlooking the Sami peculiarity.
