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Norway Holiday Accommodation
Norway
Book holiday accommodation rentals villas and apartments in Norway direct.
Norway has an area of 125,181 square miles and a length from north to south of 1,095 miles Southern Norway lies at the same latitude as Scotland: its northern coast faces the Arctic. Although the Gulf Stream softens the climate, it remains comparatively harsh. The winters can be long, cold, stormy, and snowbound; the summers can be quite hot.
The best months for touring are June to September, - except in the extreme north where the season starts in July. Norway is one of the most mountainous of countries; Galdhopiggen (8,103 ft) is the highest peak in Scandinavia. Carved out of granite, the innumerable ranges have rounded, glaciated contours, and Include a distinctive form of high, undulating plateau called a vidda. Only in the higher mountains and coastal chains has weathering produced sharp, quasi-Alpine forms. Glaciers are common, and are among the largest in Europe.
The coast is long, broken, and deeply indented by fjords, yet protected by chains of islands and reefs against the open sea, with sheltered channels for shipping. Most of the rivers are short and turbulent, but the Glomma covers some 380 m. before it pours into the Skagerak.
Hard climate and thin soil have confined agriculture to a small fraction of the country, along protected valleys and fjords, but summer pasturages are found in most mountain districts. Forests of birch and conifer cover the country, together with Arctic flora, moss, lichens, and wild berries. Salmon and trout populate the rivers; herring, cod, mackerel, and most kinds of sea fish are found in the coastal waters. There are reindeer on the viddas, and some bears and wolverines. Bird life is rich both on the coast and in the mountains.
The most noticeable insect is the gnat, which, in thick Norway has relatively few inhabitants (3,723,ooo) for her size. Most Nor?wegians live in the south Oslo, the capital, is the biggest city, next comes Bergen, then Trondheim.
Norwegians are friendly towards strangers. By Scandinavian standards they live in modest circumstances and, despite a drift to the cities, remain essentially farmers and people of the sea. They have the fourth merchant marine in the world. Germanic in origin, the modern Norwegians show a strong Celtic strain, so that dark hair is as common as red or blonde. Distance and isolation have created many dialects. The most strongly preserved minority language is that of the Lapps in the north.
