Einar Østmo 1 The History of the Norvegr 2000 BC–1000 AD When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity. John F. Kennedy, Indianapolis, April 12, 1959 Stretching for more than 2000 kilometres, Norway’s rugged coast has always posed a challenge to seafarers. Distribution of Late Neolithic artefacts imported from South Scandinavia indicates that coastal navigation became commonplace from approximately 2400 BC. Certain place- names of islands and promontories can probably be dated to the Bronze Age, indicating that the western sea-route must have been established during this period, when vessels were still pro- pelled by paddling and aristocratic societies flourished. By the early Iron Age, rowing had taken over from paddling, allowing for bigger and faster ships. Nor(ð)vegr may have been established as the name of the sea-route at this time, when again aristocratic societies existed in the region. In the Viking Age, northern ships were equipped with sails, permitting voyages across the Atlantic. By then, Norway had become the name of the country, which eventually was united as one kingdom. Thus, the development of the name can be seen as running parallel to three main stages of shipbuilding and to three stages of aristocratic splendour in Scandinavia: the Bronze Age, the early Iron Age, and the Viking Age. Norway, encompassing the western part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, is a land of extremes and natural dynamism hardly equalled anywhere in Europe. Above all, the coast can be singled out as the country’s most striking feature. In geographical terms, Norway’s coast is made up of a diverse range of terrain types (Klemsdal 1982:151; see also Skre 2018b:782–4): strandflat coast, fjord coast, fjärd coast, cliff abrasion coast, flat abrasion coast and moraine topography coast, all primary coasts, and moraine cliff coast and sandy beach coast, both sec- ondary coasts. This chapter takes as its theme the history of the concept of Norðvegr or ‘Norway’– how it first arose as a metaphor for the importance of the sea-route, and how it then came to prevail as a name for the country itself, in parallel with the development of sea traffic along the coast, with shipbuilding, and eventually with the rise (and fall) of powerful and even aristocratic communities in this part of Scandinavia. Historians’ attention to the conceptual significance of the coast of Norway of course is not new, if perhaps the long-range perspective hopefully represents a new view. Among the many works to deal with this topic, the present work is indebted particularly to Bøe (1942) and the commentary Hagen (1973). Among more recent Einar Østmo, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo Open Access. © 2020 Einar Østmo, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110421101-001 Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/4/19 11:51 PM