Why Norway is so long

The western slope

Norway occupies the western half of the Scandinavian Peninsula. About two-thirds of it is mountainous, and its deeply indented coast, cut by glacial fjords, is fringed by some 50,000 islands.^[3] Counting every fjord, bay and island, the coastline is 102,936 km long, second only to Canada’s.^[1]

The mainland stretches over just over 13 degrees of latitude, and it is 1,699 km in a straight line from Lindesnes, the southern tip, to Nordkapp.^[1] Norwegians have always lived mainly along the coast, where the warm Norwegian Current keeps the fjords from freezing; the interior, with its harsh climate and terrain, was always thinly settled.^[3]

A border on the ridge

For centuries the exact line between Denmark-Norway and Sweden was undecided. Sweden had taken Norwegian land in 1645 and then the province of Bohuslän, and the southernmost stretch, next to Bohuslän, was fixed in 1661, but wars kept the rest open, and in the far north large areas were shared districts taxed by Denmark-Norway, Sweden and Russia.^[4]

From 1738 a joint commission worked north from Kornsjø for ten years, following one main principle: the border should follow the kjølen, the mountain ridge between Norway and Sweden. The Treaty of Strömstad, signed on 2 October 1751, fixed the line up to Sør-Varanger; the last stretch, with Russia, followed in 1826.^[4] So the border runs along the mountains, and Norway is the land between the ridge and the sea.^[4][3]

Where a fjord reaches deep inland the country nearly breaks in two. From Hellmobotn, at the head of a fjord in Nordland, it is only 6,330 metres to the Swedish border.^[2]