page_title: History of Norway
section_title: 21st century
hierarchical_section_title: History of Norway / 21st century
caption_attribution_description: Oslo Børs This is a photo of a monument in Norway, number: 86138 in the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage database.
context_page_description: The history of Norway has been influenced to an extraordinary degree by the terrain and the climate of the region. About 10,000 BC, following the retreat of the great inland ice sheets, the earliest inhabitants migrated north into the territory which is now Norway. They traveled steadily northwards along the coastal areas, warmed by the Gulf Stream, where life was more bearable. In order to survive they fished and hunted reindeer. Between 5,000 BC and 4,000 BC the earliest agricultural settlements appeared around the Oslofjord. Gradually, between 1500 BC and 500 BC, these agricultural settlements spread into the southern areas of Norway – whilst the inhabitants of the northern regions continued to hunt and fish.
  The Neolithic period started in 4000 BC. The Migration Period caused the first chieftains to take control and the first defenses to be made. From the last decades of the 8th century Norwegians started expanding across the seas to the British Isles and later Iceland and Greenland. The Viking Age also saw the unification of the country. Christianization took place during the 11th century and Nidaros became an archdiocese.
context_section_description: The Norwegian Armed Forces shifted their focus from defending an invasion to being mobile for use in NATO operations abroad and participated in the War in Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq War in 2003, and in the Libyan Civil War in 2011. They were also involved in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
  On 26 December 2004 during a Christmas holiday and Boxing Day celebration, several hundred of Norwegian people in Thailand and the other part across the South and Southeast Asia were among thousands of people killed by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami off Sumatra.
  The 2011 attacks saw an attack on the Government Headquarters in Oslo and Workers' Youth League camp at the island of Utøya by the Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik, killing 77 people.
  In the 2013 Storting elections, voters ended eight years of Labour rule. A coalition of the Conservative Party and the Progress Party, was elected. The transition came amid an economy in good condition, with low unemployment.
caption: Oslo Stock Exchange languishes during the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
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