Geography of Norway

Geography of Norway

Continent	Europe
Region	Northern Europe
Coordinates	50 degrees north and 8 degrees east
Area	Ranked 67th
• Total	323,802 km2 (125,021 sq mi)
• Land	94.95%
• Water	5.05%
Coastline	25,148 km (15,626 mi)
Borders	Total land borders: 2515 km
Highest point	Galdhøpiggen 2,469 m
Lowest point	Norwegian Sea -0 meters
Longest river	Glomma 604 km
Largest lake	Mjøsa 362 km2
Exclusive economic zone	Norway with Svalbard, Jan Mayen and Bouvet Island: 2,385,178 km2 (920,922 sq mi)

Norway is a country located in Northern Europe in the northern and western parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The majority of the country borders water, including the Skagerrak inlet to the south, the North Sea to the southwest, the North Atlantic Ocean (Norwegian Sea) to the west, and the Barents Sea to the north. It has a land border with Sweden to the east; to the northeast it has a shorter border with Finland and an even shorter border with Russia.

Norway has an elongated shape, one of the longest and most rugged coastlines in the world, and there are a total of 320,249 islands and islets along much-indented coastline, according to Kartverket (the official Norwegian mapping agency). (239,057 islands and 81,192 islets). It is one of the world's northernmost countries, and it is one of Europe's most mountainous countries, with large areas dominated by the Scandinavian Mountains. The country's average elevation is 460 metres (1,510 ft), and 32 percent of the mainland is located above the tree line. Its country-length chain of peaks is geologically continuous with the mountains of Scotland, Ireland, and, after crossing under the Atlantic Ocean, the Appalachian Mountains of North America. Geologists hold that all these formed a single range before the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea.^[1]

During the last glacial period, as well as in many earlier ice ages, virtually the entire country was covered with a thick ice sheet. The movement of the ice carved out deep valleys. As a result of the ice carving, Sognefjorden is the world's second deepest fjord and Hornindalsvatnet is the deepest lake in Europe. When the ice melted, the sea filled many of these valleys, creating Norway's famous fjords.^[2] The glaciers in the higher mountain areas today are not remnants of the large ice sheet of the ice age—their origins are more recent.^[3] The regional climate was up to 1–3 °C (1.8–5.4 °F) warmer in 7000 BC to 3000 BC in the Holocene climatic optimum, (relative to the 1961-90 period), melting the remaining glaciers in the mountains almost completely during that period.

Even though it has long since been released from the enormous weight of the ice, the land is still rebounding several millimetres a year. This rebound is greatest in the eastern part of the country and in the inner parts of the long fjords, where the ice cover was thickest. This is a slow process, and for thousands of years following the end of the ice age, the sea covered substantial areas of what is today dry land. This old seabed is now among the most productive agricultural lands in the country. ^{[citation needed]}