Norwegian National Holiday

Constitution Day

Norway's Constitution Day is celebrated on May 17. It commemorates the date when the nation's constitution was signed at Eidsvoll on May 17, 1814. It is usually referred to as syttende mai (May 17) or Nasjonaldagen (The National Day) in Norwegian.

Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Scandinavian unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometers (148,747 sq mi) and a population of a little above 5 million. It is the 2nd least densely populated country in Europe. The country shares a long eastern border with Sweden (1,619 km or 1,006 mi long), which is the longest uninterrupted border within both Scandinavia & Europe at large. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, and the Skagerrak Strait to the south, with Denmark on the other side. It shares maritime borders with Russia by the Barents Sea; Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland by the Norwegian Sea; and Sweden, Denmark, and the United Kingdom by the North Sea. Norway's extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea, is laced with fjords, a renowned part of its landscape. The capital city Oslo is the largest in the nation, with a population of 630,000. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, fresh water, and hydropower.

The North Germanic Norwegian language has two official written forms, Bokmål and Nynorsk. Both of them are recognized as official languages, and are both used in public administration, in schools, churches, and media. Bokmål is the written language used by the vast majority of about 80–85%. The alternative, Riksmål, is more similar to Danish. Around 95% of the population speaks Norwegian as their first or native language, although many speak dialects that may differ significantly from the written language. All Norwegian dialects are mutually intelligible, although listeners with limited exposure to dialects other than their own may struggle to understand certain phrases and pronunciations in some other dialects.