30 Strange Facts About Norway That Are Actually True

30 Strange Facts About Norway That Are Actually True Norway is far stranger than most people realize. Yes, it has fjords and Vikings. But it also has a seed vault buried inside an Arctic mountain, roads that climb impossible terrain, the world’s longest road tunnel, prehistoric rock carvings dated by rising land, ancient arrows melting out of mountain ice, and mountains that were once connected to the Appalachian Mountains in North America. In this video, we count down 30 strange facts about Norway that sound fake but are actually true. You’ll learn about: • Norway’s massive coastline • Svalbard and its unusual treaty • The Global Seed Vault • Polar night and the midnight sun • Sámi culture • Norway’s hydropower • Oil and gas exports • The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund • Norway’s electric vehicle boom • The Atlantic Ocean Road • Trollstigen • The Lærdal Tunnel • The Stad Ship Tunnel • Norwegian fjords • Hardangervidda • Wild reindeer • The truth about lemmings • Norway’s famous Slow TV • Viking ships • Stave churches • Alta rock carvings • Post-glacial land uplift • Ancient arrows melting out of ice • The geological connection between Norway, Scotland, Greenland, and Appalachia One of the strangest facts is Svalbard. The Arctic archipelago sits far north of mainland Norway and operates under a treaty that gives citizens of signatory countries unusual rights to live and work there. Inside one of its mountains is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, storing more than a million seed samples as a backup for agriculture around the world. Then there is Norway’s geography. Around 90% of its electricity comes from hydropower in many years, while Norway is also one of the world’s major exporters of oil and natural gas. The country used much of that petroleum wealth to build one of the largest sovereign wealth funds on Earth. And Norway’s landscape gets even stranger the further back you go. At Alta, prehistoric carvings span thousands of years and can be roughly dated by their elevation because the land has been rising ever since the Ice Age. High in the mountains, retreating ice patches are exposing arrows, clothing, and other artifacts lost thousands of years ago. And Norway’s mountain chain is geologically connected to the Scottish Highlands, eastern Greenland, and the Appalachian Mountains of North America. They were once part of the same ancient mountain system before the Atlantic Ocean opened between them.