Norway
Welcome to EuroPACS 2006:  The 24th International EuroPACS Conference, June 15th to 17th 2006 in Trondheim, Norway

General
Norway consists of the western and northern section of the Scandinavian peninsula, as well as the arctic island archipelago Svalbard plus Jan Mayen. To the east of Norway lies Sweden, Finland and Russia. To the west, the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. To the north is the Barents Sea, to the south, the North Sea.

Including Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Norwegian territory covers 386,958 square kilometres. The mainland is long - 1752 km from the southern to the northernmost tip. The coastline itself is 2650 km long, if you were to include the length of all the fingers of the fjords it would be 10 times longer. The northern region of Norway is narrow, a mere 6.3 km at its narrowest. The country widens south of Trondheimsfjord and is 430 km at its widest. It is at this widest point that eastern and western Norway are divided by the mountain range called Langfjellene. Half of the country's total area lies above the timberline. 25% of the country is covered by forest, leaving only 3% arable land.

Norway is a constitutional monarchy. Its population is 4,525,000, giving a population density of 11.7 per km². The capital city of Oslo has 512 000 inhabitants.

Economy
The Norwegian economy is a prosperous bastion of welfare capitalism, featuring a combination of free market activity and government intervention. The government controls key areas, such as the vital petroleum sector (through large-scale state enterprises). The country is richly endowed with natural resources - petroleum, hydropower, fish, forests, and minerals - and is highly dependent on its oil production and international oil prices, with oil and gas accounting for one-third of exports. Only Saudi Arabia and Russia export more oil than Norway. Norway opted to stay out of the EU during a referendum in November 1994. The government has moved ahead with privatization. With arguably the highest quality of life worldwide, Norwegians still worry about that time in the next two decades when the oil and gas begin to run out. Accordingly, Norway has been saving its oil-boosted budget surpluses in a Government Petroleum Fund, which is invested abroad and now is valued at more than $43 billion. GDP growth was a lackluster 1% in 2002 and 0.5% in 2003 against the background of a faltering European economy.

Currency: Norwegian krone (NOK). Norwegian krone / US dollar = 6.59.  Norwegian krone / Euro = 7.69 (2005)

GDP (purchasing power parity): US$ 171.6 billion (2003 est.).

GDP per capita (purchasing power parity): US$ 37,700 (2003 est.).
 

Information about Norway in 15 different languages