The Hanseatic League in Bergen
Bergen is generally regarded as Scandinavia’s largest commercial hub. It was the largest city in Scandinavia until the 17th century, and the largest in Norway until the 19th century.
Hanseatic cities
A Cog (1460)
Vikings
Finnish Civil War. 27 January – 15 May 1918.
Winter War. USSR vs Finland, 30 November 1939 – 13 March 1940
German invasion of Denmark (1940)
German occupation of Norway (1940)
Government Pension Fund of Norway
Icelandic financial crisis. 2008–2011
Norway attacks 2011
There is an unlikely website called Badass of the Week. There you can read about entertaining characters. Here are a few from Scandinavia.
Olaf Crowbone (960–1000)
Leif Erikson (970 - 1025)
King Cnut (990 - 1035) King Cnut and the tide
Harald Hardrada (1015 - 1066)
Viking of Stamford Bridge (1066)
Fridtjof Nansen (1861 - 1930)
Simo Häyhä (1905 - 2002)
Thor Heyerdahl (1914 - 2002)
Here is a list of famous Scandinavians on Wikipedia.
Erik the Red (950-1003) Norwegian explorer. Settled Greenland.
One pleasure of researching a trip is when you come across interesting characters in the history of your destination. Here is one.
Fridtjof Nansen
1861. Born in what is now Oslo, Norway.
1879 (18). Beat the world skating record.
1880. Won the Norwegian national cross-country skiing championship, a feat he would repeat on 11 subsequent occasions.
1881. Began studying zoology at University of Oslo.
1882 (21). Joined a sea voyage on a sealer, to study Arctic zoology between Greenland and Spitzbergen. Measured the Gulf Stream.
Appointed curator in the zoological department of the Bergen Museum. Nansen's chosen area of study was the then relatively unexplored field of neuroanatomy, specifically the central nervous system of lower marine creatures. Nansen is considered the first Norwegian defender of the neuron theory. His subsequent paper, The Structure and Combination of Histological Elements of the Central Nervous System, published in 1887, became his doctoral thesis.
1888 (27). Led the first expedition to cross Greenland. Six men. It took nearly a year.
Nansen accepted the position of curator of the University of Oslo's zoology collection.
1893 (32). He began an expedition to reach the North Pole in the specially designed ship Fram.
They Said Freezing a Ship in Ice Was Madness: Nansen Did It Anyway
Nansen and Fram. 1:40 - 11.0
1921 He was appointed the League of Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees.
1922. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his work for the repatriation of the prisoners of war, his work for the Russian refugees, his work to bring succour to the millions of Russians afflicted by famine, and finally his present work for the refugees in Asia Minor and Thrace".
From 1925 onwards, Nansen devoted much time trying to help Armenian refugees, victims of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War and further ill-treatment thereafter.
1930 Nansen died of a heart attack aged 68.
Roald Amundsen (1872 – 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
A party of five, led by Amundsen, became the first to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911.
Roald Amundsen: Conqueror of the South Pole
The Man Who Conquered the Poles - Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen and the Northwest passage (1903-1906)
Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906) was a Norwegian playwright. He is considered one of the world's pre-eminent writers of the 19th century and is often referred to as "the father of modern drama".
One his most famous plays was 'A Doll's House'.
Download ePub version.
A Doll's House - Ibsen - 1992
The Work of Ibsen: Part One
A Doll's House and Ghosts
The Work of Ibsen: Part Two
Hedda Gabler and Master Builder
Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work The Scream has become one of the most iconic and acclaimed images in all of Western art.
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