The official country name in conventional long form is the Kingdom of Norway. Norge is the local short form. The capital of Norway is Oslo. Norway is situated far to the north in the western corner of Europe bordering the North Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. Norway shares borders with Sweden, Finland and Russia. The Kingdom of Norway, in addition to the mainland, includes the Svalbard archipelago and Jan Mayen. Norway also has territories in the Antarctic region. These are Bouvet Island and Peter I Island. The size of Norway is slightly larger that New Mexico. The geographical conditions do not favor internal communication in Norway. The terrain is two-thirds mountains and there are nearly 50,000 islands off its coastline. High mountains, glaciers with high plateaus deep fjords, and arctic tundra in the north make communication difficult (www.odci.gov.)
             Norway's natural resources include petroleum, copper, natural gas, pyrites, nickel, iron ore, zinc, lead, fish, timber, and hydropower. Current environmental issues include: water pollution; acid rain damaging forests and adversely affecting lakes, threatening fish stocks; air pollution from vehicle emissions (www.odci.gov.)
             Norway has a population of 4,438,537 with a growth rate of .4% recorded in July 1999 (www.ssb.no.) The life expectancy at birth of the total population is 78.36 years. This statistic is broken down by gender and the life expectancy at birth for females is 81.35 years and 75.55 years for male, est. in 1999. The estimated total fertility rate in 1999 is 1.77 children born per woman. The infant mortality rate is 4.96 deaths per 1,000 live births (1999 est.) (www.adin.dep.no.) Ethnic groups include: Germanic (Nordic, Alpine, Baltic), Lapps (Sami) (www.odci.gov.) The major religions are Evangelical Lutheran 87.8% (state church), other Protestant and Roman Catholic 3.8%, none 3.2%, unknown 5.2% (1980) (Ostbye, 1992.) The official language is N...