Petty kingdoms of Norway

Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of Norway. Bouvet Island, located in the Subantarctic, is a dependency, and not a part of the Kingdom; Norway also claims the Antarctic territories of Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land. Norway has a population of 5.6 million. Its capital and largest city is Oslo. The country has a total area of 385,207 square kilometres (148,729 sq mi). The country shares a long eastern border with Sweden, and is bordered by Finland and Russia to the northeast. Norway has an extensive coastline facing the Skagerrak strait, the North Atlantic Ocean, and the Barents Sea. In 2024, Norway was ranked the seventh happiest country in the world.

The unified kingdom of Norway was established in 872 as a merger of petty kingdoms and has existed continuously for 1,152–1,153 years. From 1537 to 1814, Norway was part of Denmark–Norway, and, from 1814 to 1905, it was in a personal union with Sweden. Norway was neutral during the First World War, and in the Second World War until April 1940 when it was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany until the end of the war.

The monarchy of Norway is the system used in Norway by which a hereditary monarch reigns as head of state under a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. The Norwegian monarchy can trace its line back to the reign of Harald Fairhair and the previous petty kingdoms which were united to form Norway; it has been in unions with both Sweden and Denmark for long periods.

The present monarch is King Harald V, who has reigned since 17 January 1991, succeeding his father, Olav V. The heir apparent is his only son, Crown Prince Haakon. The crown prince undertakes various public ceremonial functions, as does the king's wife, Queen Sonja. The crown prince also acts as regent in the king's absence. There are several other members of the royal family, including the king's daughter, grandchildren and sister. Since the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden and the subsequent election of a Danish prince as King Haakon VII in 1905, the reigning royal house of Norway has been a branch of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg branch of the House of Oldenburg; originally from modern-day Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, agnatically (through Prince Philip) the same royal house as the British (since the accession of Charles III), Danish and former Greek royal families.

The list of monarchs of Norway (Norwegian: kongerekken or kongerekka) begins in 872: the traditional dating of the Battle of Hafrsfjord, after which victorious King Harald Fairhair merged several petty kingdoms into that of his father. Named after the homonymous geographical region, Harald's realm was later to be known as the Kingdom of Norway.

Traditionally established in 872 and existing continuously for over 1,100 years, the Kingdom of Norway is one of the oldest states of Europe: King Harald V, who has reigned since 1991, is the 64th monarch according to the official list. During interregna, Norway has been ruled by variously titled regents.

The Unification of Norway (Norwegian Bokmål: Rikssamlingen) is the process by which Norway merged from several petty kingdoms into a single kingdom, predecessor to the modern Kingdom of Norway.

Agder is a county (fylke) and traditional region in the southern part of Norway and is coextensive with the Southern Norway region. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Aust-Agder counties were merged. Since the early 1900s, the term Sørlandet ("south country, south land, southland") has been commonly used for this region, sometimes with the inclusion of neighbouring Rogaland. Before that time, the area was considered a part of Western Norway.

The area was a medieval petty kingdom, and after Norway's unification became known as Egdafylki and later Agdesiden, a county within the kingdom of Norway. The name Agder was not used after 1662, when the area was split into smaller governmental units called Nedenæs, Råbyggelaget, Lister, and Mandal. The name was resurrected in 1919 when two counties of Norway that roughly corresponded to the old Agdesiden county were renamed Aust-Agder (East Agder) and Vest-Agder (West Agder). Even before the two counties joined in 2020, they cooperated in many ways; the University of Agder had sites in both Aust-Agder and Vest-Agder, as did many other institutions, such as the Diocese of Agder og Telemark, the Agder Court of Appeal, and the Agder Police District.

Jarl (/jɑːl/) was a rank of the nobility in Scandinavia during the Viking Age and Early Middle Ages. The institution evolved over time and varied by region. In Old Norse, it meant "chieftain", specifically one appointed to rule a territory in a king's stead. It could also denote a sovereign prince. For example, during the Viking age, the rulers of several of the petty kingdoms of Norway held the title of jarl, often wielding no less power than their neighboring kings. In later medieval Sweden and Norway, there was typically only one jarl in the kingdom, second in authority only to the king. The title became obsolete in the Middle Ages and was replaced by the rank of duke (hertig/hertug/hertog). The word is etymologically related to the English earl.
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