ONE LAND · 12 ATLASES
History of Norway in maps
Norway as it appears in 12 interactive history atlases, from 790 to 2015: Norway. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Norway before it was Norway? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History atlases — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.
Norway · Norse and Aztecs
The homeland of the western Norse, a land of fjords where only about 3 percent of the soil can be ploughed. Its chieftains built the ships, raised the crews and later the kingdom that ruled the islands of the west. After 1100 its wealth came increasingly from stockfish dried at Lofoten and shipped through Bergen, and its kings took Iceland and Greenland under their crown in 1261–64.
| Norse homelands & settlements — the opening position |
NORSE AND AZTECS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway (united with Sweden to 1905) · Industrial Revolution
| Industrialising — the opening position | |
| Industrialising | |
| Industrialising |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway · Age of Revolutions
| Neutral / uncommitted — the opening position | |
| Napoleonic client & satellite states | |
| The conservative monarchies |
AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
| Western powers and allies — the opening position |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway · Russian Revolution
Neutral Norway’s revolution was humanitarian, and it has a name: Fridtjof Nansen. The polar explorer became the League of Nations’ High Commissioner for the crisis Russia exported — repatriating half a million prisoners of war, organizing famine relief in 1921–22, and inventing the “Nansen passport” that gave legal identity to hundreds of thousands of stateless White émigrés. His 1922 Nobel Peace Prize was, in effect, awarded for cleaning up after this atlas.
| Neutral or independent — the opening position |
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway · WWI
Norway · Stalin’s Soviet Union
| Nazi Germany & its allies — the opening position | |
| Nazi Germany & its allies | |
| Other states | |
| Rivals & the Western bloc |
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway · Road to WW2
| Neutral & unaligned — the opening position | |
| Occupied — held by force |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway · WW2
Invaded April 1940 for its ports and the iron-ore route. The puppet ruler Vidkun Quisling gave the world a new word for traitor. Its merchant fleet — the world’s fourth largest — escaped and served the Allies decisively.
| Axis-occupied — the opening position | |
| Axis-occupied | |
| Western Allies |
Norway · Cold War
| NATO & core Western allies — the opening position |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway · Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution
| Right won in law — the opening position | |
| Partial or unequal; treaty signed only; transition | |
| No reform yet / outside this story | |
| Right won in law |
FEMINISM AND THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Norway · Refugee crises
| Western bloc or democracy — the opening position |
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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