Norwegians
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
 Norway:4,305,886[1] | |
 United States[a] | 4,712,232[2] |
 Canada[a] | 521,390[3] |
 Iceland | 295,672[4] (See Icelanders) |
 Brazil | 150,000 - 350,000 (est.) |
 Argentina | 50,000 - 200,000 (est.) |
 United Kingdom[a][b] | 13,798[5] also circa 42,000 Orcadians and Shetlanders |
 Sweden[a] | 48,385[6][7] |
 Faroe Islands | 45,000[8] (See Faroese people) |
 Australia | 32,850[9] |
| Languages | |
| Norwegian Related languages include Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Swedish, and to a lesser extent, all Germanic languages. | |
| Religion | |
| 83% of the population of Norway are members of the Christian Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway.[10] Norway is highly secularized, and only about 10% of the population attend religious services more than once a month.[11] The Norwegians in Norway are more secular than the Norwegians in the United States. North Dakota has the lowest percentage of non-religious people of any state, and it also has the most churches per capita of any state[12][13][13], which is a state were 30.4 % of the population is Norwegian. | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Faroese, Icelanders, Danes, Swedes Scots, Dutch, English, Normans, Germans Other Germanic ethnic groups | |
a. ^ Does not include people of Faroese, Icelandic, Orcadian or Shetlandic ancestry, or any other rigmaroles and paradoxes. b. ^ Note that there are millions of Britons of Scandinavian ancestry and ethnicity, though mixed with others. | |
b.png)
Norwegians (Norwegian: nordmenn) are a Northern European ethnic group indigenous to Norway and other Scandinavian countries, as well as many other countries in diaspora. Norwegians mostly speak Norwegian as well as other languages in diaspora and most of them are members of the Church of Norway. Many of those who emigrated from Norway emigrate because of political and religious motives. Norwegian Americans are therefore far more religious than their brethren in Norway, and many of them have converted to other Christian denominations.
Viking Age
The Norwegians traveled to the north, north-west and west, founding vibrant communities in the Faroe Islands, Shetland, Orkney, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland and northern England. Norwegian Vikings conducted extensive raids in Ireland and founded the cities of Cork, Dublin and Limerick. A new wave of Norwegian Vikings appeared in England in 947 when Erik Bloodaxe captured York. Apart from Britain and Ireland, Norwegians mostly found largely uninhabited land, and established settlements in those places. The first known permanent Norwegian settler in Iceland was Ingólfur Arnarson, who built his homestead in Reykjavík, traditionally in the year 874. According to the saga of Erik the Red, when Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland he went west. There he found a land that he named Greenland, hoping that the Icelanders would be eager to settle there if it had a promising name. The Viking Age settlements in Greenland were established in the sheltered fjords of the southern and western coast.
Norwegians in Norway
See also History of Norway and Demographics of Norway.
According to recent genetic analysis, both mtDNA and Y chromosome polymorphisms showed a noticeable genetic affinity between Norwegians and central Europeans, especially Germans. (These conclusions are also valid for Swedes) [14] For the global genetic make-up of the Norwegian people and other peoples, see also: [2] and [3]
Norwegian diaspora
Norwegian citizens abroad
As with many of the people from European countries, Norwegians are spread throughout the world. There are more than 100,000 Norwegian citizens living abroad permanently, mostly in the USA, United Kingdom and in the other Scandinavian countries.
The Netherlands
During the 17th and 18th centuries, many Norwegians emigrated to the Netherlands and in particular Amsterdam. This emigration is regarded as the second of the waves of emigration from Norway (the first being the trek to the England, Atlantic islands, Normandy, etc. during the Viking age, and the third was to North America, not counting the Gothic emigrations to Continental Europe in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.) Loosely estimated some 10% of the population may have emigrated, in a period when the entire Norwegian population consisted of some 800,000 people. The Norwegians left with the Dutch trade ships that in Norway traded for timber, hides, herring and stockfish (dried codfish). Young women took employment as maids in Amsterdam. Young men took employment as sailors. Large parts of the Dutch merchant fleet and navy came to consist of Norwegians and Danes. They took Dutch names, so no trace of Norwegian names can be found in the Dutch population of today. One well known illustration is that of Admiral Kruys. He was hired in Amsterdam by Peter I to develop the Russian navy, but was originally from Stavanger in Norway (Kruys means 'cross', and the Russian maritime flag is today also a blue cross on white background). The emigration to the Netherlands was so devastating to the homelands that the Danish-Norwegian king issued penalties of death for emigration, but repeatedly had to issue amnesties for those willing to return, announced by posters in the streets of Amsterdam. Increasingly, Dutchmen who search their genealogical roots turn to Norway. Many Norwegians who emigrated to the Netherlands, and often were employed in the Dutch merchant fleet, emigrated further to the many Dutch colonies such as New Amsterdam (New York).
United States
Many Norwegians emigrated to the U.S.A. between the 1850s and the 1920s. Today, the descendants of these people are known as Norwegian Americans. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, three million Americans consider Norwegian to be their sole or primary ancestry. It is estimated that as many as a further 1.5 million more are of partial Norwegian ancestry.
Traveling to and through Canada and Canadian ports were of choice for Norwegian settlers immigrating to the United States. In 1850, the year after Great Britain repealed its restrictive Navigation Acts in Canada, more and more emigrating Norwegians sailed the shorter route to the Ville de Québec (Quebec City) in Canada, to make their way on to USA cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, and Green Bay by steamer. For example, in the 1850s, 28,640 arrived at Quebec, Canada, en route to the USA, and 8,351 at New York directly.
Norwegian Americans represent 2-3% of the non-Hispanic Euro-American population in the U.S. They mostly live in the Upper Midwest.
Canada
As early as 1814, a party of Norwegians was brought to Canada to build a winter road from York Factory on Hudson Bay in northern Canada to the infant Red River settlement at the site of present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Norway House is one of the oldest trading posts and Native-Canadian missions in the Canadian West. Willard Ferdinand Wentzel served the North West Company of Canada in the Athabasca and Mackenzie regions and accompanied Sir John Franklin on his overland expedition in 1819–20 to the Canadian Arctic.
Norwegians immigrated to Canada in search of the Canadian Dream. This immigration lasted from the mid-1880s until 1930. It can be divided into three periods of roughly fifteen years each. In the first, to about 1900, thousands of Norwegians homesteaded on the Canadian prairies. In the second, from 1900 to 1914, there was a further heavy influx of Norwegians immigrating to Canada from the United States because of poor economic conditions in the USA, and 18,790 from Norway. In the third, from 1919 to 1930, 21,874 people came directly from Norway, with the peak year in 1927, when 5,103 Norwegians arrived, spurred by severe depression at home. They came with limited means, many leaving dole queues.
From 1825 to 1900 some 500,000 Norwegians landed at Quebec City, Quebec, (and other Canadian ports) for traveling through Canada was the shortest corridor to the Central American states. In spite of efforts by the Government of Canada to retain these immigrants for Canada, very few remained because of Canada's somewhat restrictive land policies at that time and negative stories being told about Canada from U.S. land agents deterring Norwegians from going to Canada. Not until the 1880s did Norwegians accept Canada as a land of opportunity. This was also true of the many Americans of Norwegian heritage who immigrated to Canada from the USA with "Canada Fever" seeking homesteads and new economic opportunities. By 1921 one-third of all Norwegians in Canada had been born in the USA.
These new Canadians became British subjects in Canada, and part of the British Empire. Canadian citizenship, as a status distinct from that of a British subject, was created on 1 January 1947, with Canada being the first Commonwealth country to create their own citizenship. Prior to that date, Canadians were British subjects and Canada's nationality law closely mirrored that of the United Kingdom. On 1 January 1947, Canadian citizenship was conferred on most British subjects connected with Canada. Unlike in the USA, Canada was part of the British Empire and most Norwegians would have become Canadians and British subjects at the same time.
According to the 2006 Canadian census, 432,515 Canadians reported Norwegian ancestry (Norwegian-Canadians). Norwegians make up 2% of the White Canadian population. However, the actual figure may be higher. It is important to note that because so many Norwegian women married men of other nationalities, and thus by census rules are not counted as having children of this ethnic origin, this tends to reduce the number in the statistics.
Australia
An organized European immigration to Australia was initiated in 1788. And most of the early emigrants were deported from the Britain.
There were people from the British Isles as completely dominated when emigration to Australia changed character from being deported, to be virtually voluntary. In David Copperfield Charles Dickens allows Mr. Mickawber go to Australia as a result of economic problems, and it was a piece on the way representative. From the 1830s used by the British authorities planned export of surplus population, and over the years up to 1897 was 600,000 persons exported in whole or in part at public expense.
But when the gold rush began in Australia in 1851 flocked to the volunteers, and it has been said that as many as 5000 Norwegian-born was in the periods. Around 1860 there shall have been around 2500 Norwegians there. A good number of these had previously tried luck that gold miners in California, and many went also return to America. Gullgravere guess almost by definition, fortune seekers, and thus prepared to move around depending on your luck might smile, and there was little stability there.
Russia
| Part of a series on |
| Norwegians |
|---|
 |
| Culture |
| Diaspora |
| Other |
| Norwegian Portal |
See article: Kola Norwegians
Some Norwegians who once lived in the Russian city of Murmansk have left. There are very few of them left there today. The Norwegians in Murmansk are Kola Norwegians.
Other
| Country | Population | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Iceland
|
319,756 | 93.1%[4] (See Icelanders) |
| Faroe Islands
|
49,006 | 92.3%[15] (See Faroese people) |
| Norway
|
4,799,252 | 86.1%1 |
 United States
|
307,966,000 | 1.7%1 |
| Canada
|
34,043,000 | 1.6%1 |
| Sweden
|
9,325,429 | 0.4%1 |
 Denmark
|
5,532,531 | 0.2%1 |
| World | 6,790,062,216 | 0.171 |
| Footnotes 1- Does not include people of Faroese, Icelandic, Orcadian or Shetlandic ancestry, or any other paradoxes. |
List of counties by Norwegians
This is a list with percentage of Norwegians in counties (including other non-immigrants in Norway such as the Sami people). Recent mass immigration to Norway and low birth rates continues to make the Norwegian population in Norwegian counties rapidly decline.[16][17]
| County | Norwegians |
|---|---|
 Nord-Trøndelag |
95.4% |
 Nordland |
94.9% |
 Hedmark |
93.8% |
| File:Coat of Arms of Troms.svg Troms | 93.6% |
 Sogn og Fjordane |
93.4% |
 Møre og Romsdal |
93.3% |
 Oppland |
93.6% |
 Sør-Trøndelag |
92.1% |
 Finnmark |
92.0% |
 Aust-Agder |
91.5% |
 Telemark |
91.4% |
 Hordaland |
91.1% |
 Vestfold |
90.4% |
 Vest-Agder |
89.6% |
 Østfold |
88.6% |
 Rogaland |
88.5% |
 Buskerud |
87.4% |
 Akershus |
86.8% |
 Oslo |
72.6% |
| Divide County, North Dakota | 64.7% |
| Steele County, North Dakota | 62.0% |
| Traill County, North Dakota | 59.0% |
| Norman County, Minnesota | 58.9% |
| Griggs County, North Dakota | 58.9% |
| Nelson County, North Dakota | 54.8% |
| Burke County, North Dakota | 53.1% |
| Pennington County, Minnesota | 50.6% |
Rindal and Beiarn municipalities have the highest percentage of Norwegians, 99.5% and 99.1%, respectively.
Culture
Language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language with around 5 million speakers in mainly in Norway. There are also some speakers of Norwegian in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Britain, Spain, Canada and the United States. The largest community of Norwegian speakers outside Norway are situated in the United States with 55,311 speakers as of 2000[18]. Nearly half of them live in Minnesota (8,060), California (5,865), Washington (5,460), New York (4,200), and Wisconsin (3,520). There is also 7,710 Norwegian speakers in Canada with 3,420 in British Columbia, 1,360 in Alberta, and 1,145 in Ontario[19].
Religion
The conversion of Norway to Christianity began in 1000 AD. Then it had become well established in Norway by the middle of the 11th century and had become dominant by the middle of the 12th century. The Norwegians were Catholics until the Danish king Christian III of Denmark ordered Denmark to convert to Lutheranism in 1536 and as Norway was then ruled by Denmark, the Norwegians converted as well. The church undertook a program to convert the Sámi in the 16th and 17th century with the program being largely successful.
Today, a majority of both Norwegians and Sámi are Christian. In the 19th century emigration from Norway start and Lutheranism spread to many American villages. Many of those emigrated because of religious and political motives. Many of the remaining Norwegians in Norway didn't have strong faith, so between generations in the 20th century they lost their faith. However there is still many religious people in Norway, although 78% of the population say religion is unimportant[20] and weekly church attendance is as low as 2%[21] compared to the U. S. state of North Dakota. This state, where Norwegians constitute 30.4% of the population, has the lowest percentage of non-religious people of any state, it also has the most churches per capita of any state, and it has a regularly church attendance at 43% compared to 2% in Norway[12][13][22].
Other terms used
The Norwegians are and have been referred to by other terms as well. Some of them include:
- Nordmenn: A term used by Scandinavians to denote ethnic Norwegians and Norwegian citizens. It translates as "Northmen". (Singular: Nordmann)
- Northmen: Old term used by other European peoples to denote the peoples originating in the northern regions of Europe.
- Norsemen or Norse: Viking Age peoples of Nordic origin.
- Vikings: Used in the Nordic countries to denote people who went raiding, pillaging or slave catching during the Viking Age. Used in a similar way by other peoples but can also mean Scandinavians in general.
- Minnewegian: Colloquial term for a Norwegian Minnesotan.
- Norrbagge: A Swedish derogatory term for Norwegians (first attested use in 1257), based on the root bagge meaning sheep's testicles.
- Norski: Common name for Northern American Norwegians.
See also
References
- ^ "Without immigrant background" : Population 1.1.2010 (4 305 886 [1])
- ^ The 2000 American census reports that the United States, in the 2000 census, has 4,477,725 inhabitants of Norwegian ancestry.
- ^ Shows a list over Canadas different ethnic groups, reports that there is 363,760 Norwegians in Canada.
- ^ a b Icelanders are almost exclusively descended from Scandinavians (Chiefly from Western Norway) (genetically 60-80%) and Celts (Irish, Scottish - genetically 20-40%)
- ^ Number of Norwegians registered at the Embassy for living in each of these countries.
- ^ Swedish Statistics from 2005. Shows the official number of Norwegians in Sweden at page 20.
- ^ Sweden: Stock of foreign-born population by country of birth, by year
- ^ Faroe Islanders are almost exclusively descended from Scandinavians (Chiefly from Western Norway) (genetically 50-80%) and Celts (Irish, Scottish - genetically 20-50%)
- ^ Australian population: ethnic origins
- ^ Template:No icon Welcome to the Church of Norway
- ^ Religion in Norway (Norway - the official site in the United States)
- ^ a b "American Religious Identification Survey". Exhibit 15. The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Retrieved 2006-11-24.
- ^ a b c "North Dakota Movers". US-Moving.com. Retrieved 2007-08-19.
- ^ http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/EJHG_2002_v10_521-529.pdf
- ^ Faroe Islanders are almost exclusively descended from Scandinavians (Chiefly from Western Norway) (genetically 50-80%) and Celts (Irish, Scottish - genetically 20-50%)
- ^ Statistics Norway - Immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrant parents by country background1 and county. 1 January 2010
- ^ "Counties with more than 30 % Norwegian Ancestry". Sogn of Fjordane Fylkeskommune. Retrieved 2009-12-31.
- ^ U.S Census 2000
- ^ "Detailed Mother Tongue (148), Single and Multiple Language Responses (3) and Sex (3) for the Population of Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2006 Census – 20% Sample Data". 2007.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ GALLUP WorldView - data accessed on 17 january 2009
- ^ Stavanger Aftenblad - 2 prosent går i kirken på en vanlig søndag
- ^ San Diego Times, May 2, 2006, from 2006 Gallup survey
External links
| Europe | | |
|---|---|---|
| Africa | ||
| Americas | ||
| Asia & Oceania | ||
See also: Nordic diaspora and Norwegians | ||
