Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: What is the major ethnic group in Norway?
Ethnically, the residents of Norway are predominantly Norwegians, a North Germanic ethnic group descent. In Northern Norway live the Sami, who claim descent from people who settled the area around 8,000 years ago, probably from continental Europe through the Norwegian coast and through Finland along the inland glaciers. As of 2012, an official government study shows that 86.2% of the total population are ethnic Norwegians. The national minorities of Norway include Scandinavian Romani, Roma, Jews, and Kvener, as well as a small Finnish community.
The Islamic Council Norway was founded on 22 October 1993. Since 2006, it has received state funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture . The funding was about 1,3 million NOK a year. The organisation's membership counts Muslim congregations centered around several different immigrant groups, notably Albanian, Bosnian, Iraqi and Pakistani congregations, as well as mosques with congregations that do not center around specific ethnic groups. Its stated mission is to
In 2017the IRN lost its state funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture. The ministry stated it was dissatisfied with how IRN had handled its role as a dialogue partner with the Norwegian majority society and its role as an umbrella organisation. Other muslim community leaders supported the decision and supported the view that IRN had not encouraged dialogue with Norwegian society. Community leaders had on previous occasions stated that IRN did not represent them.
Nidaros Cathedral is the only great, Gothic cathedral in Norway, and it is also the largest medieval church in Scandinavia, 102 m long, 50 m wide and 21 m from floor to ceiling inside. Kongsberg Church with an original 2400 seats on 1000 m is regarded as the largest church building in Norway, now seating is limited to 1100. The Kongsberg Silver Mines made Kongsberg one of the largest and most important towns in Norway during the 17th and 18th centuries. Røros Church seats about 1600 people and is also one of the largest in Norway, and like Kongsberg Church was built in an important mining town. Kongsberg and Røros Churches are the most monumental church buildings from the 18th century according to Østby. Lyngdal Church (Vest-Agder) is one of the largest rural churches with some 1600 seats.
The "Swedish-speaking Finns" or "Finland-Swedes" form a minority group in Finland. The characteristic of this minority is debated: while some see it as an ethnic group of its own some view it purely as a linguistic minority. The group includes about 265,000 people, comprising 5.10% of the population of mainland Finland, or 5.50 % if the 26,000 inhabitants of Åland are included (there are also about 60,000 Swedish-speaking Finns currently resident in Sweden). It has been presented that the ethnic group can also perceived as distinct Swedish-speaking nationality in Finland. There are also 9,000 Swedish citizens living in Finland.
The Glomma, or Glåma, is Norway's longest and most voluminous river. With a total length of , it has a drainage basin that covers fully 13% of Norway's surface area, all in the southern part of the country.
The krone (sign: kr; code: NOK), plural "kroner", is the currency of Norway and its dependent territories. It is subdivided into 100 "øre", which have existed only electronically since 2012. The name translates into English as "crown".
The majority of the Norwegian immigrants to Baltimore worked in the shipping industry. The Baltimore chapter of the Sons of Norway, Lodge Nordkap, No. 215, was established in 1921 and is now located in Freeland, Maryland. These settlers also established the Norwegian American Club of Maryland.
The silver mines of Kongsberg, in Buskerud county in Norway, constitute the largest mining field in Norway, with over 80 different mines. It was the largest pre-industrial working place in Norway, with over 4,000 workers at its peak in the 1770s and supplied over 10% of the gross national product of the Danish–Norwegian union during its 335-year-long history: over 450,000 man-years were expended in the production.
Erik Grønseth (13 September 1925 – 8 October 2005) was a Norwegian sociologist, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo from 1971 to 1989, and "one of the post-war pioneers of sociology" in Norway. Together with Harriet Holter, he is considered the founder of Norwegian family sociology.
Danish (; "dansk" , "dansk sprog" ) is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in Denmark and in the region of Southern Schleswig in northern Germany, where it has minority language status. Also, minor Danish-speaking communities are found in Norway, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas, around 15–20% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their first language.
The Sami people (formerly known as Lapps) are a people indigenous to all of northern Scandinavia (see Sápmi (area)) who speak a closely related group of languages usually grouped together under the name "Sami", but at least three separate Sami languages are spoken in Sweden. They are, like Finnish and Meänkieli, Uralic. Prolonged exposure to Germanic-language-speaking neighbors in Sweden and Norway causes them to have a large number of Germanic loanwords not normally found in other Uralic languages like Finnish, Estonian, or Hungarian. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Sami people live in Sweden of whom 9,000 are Sami-language speakers. Worldwide, between 20,000 and 40,000 people speak Sami languages (most Sami now speak Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, or Russian as their first language, depending on the country in which they reside). In Sweden, the largest concentrations of Sami-language-speaking Sami are found in the municipalities of Arjeplog, Gällivare, Jokkmokk and Kiruna, and its immediate neighbourhood.
The Kingdom of Sweden is a nation-state for the Swedish people, and as such, their national language is held in very high regard. Of Sweden's roughly ten million people, almost all speak Swedish as at least a second language, and the majority as a first language (7,825,000, according to SIL's Ethnologue). Swedish is also an official language in Finland where it is spoken by a large number of Swedish-speaking Finns. The language is also spoken to some degree by ethnic Swedes living outside Sweden, for example, just over half a million people of Swedish descent in the United States speak the language, according to Ethnologue.
Christianity in Scandinavia came later than most parts of Europe. In Denmark Harald Bluetooth Christianized the country around 980. The process of Christianization began in Norway during the reigns of Olaf Tryggvason (reigned 995 AD–c.1000 AD) and Olaf II Haraldsson (reigned 1015 AD–1030 AD). Olaf and Olaf II had been baptized voluntarily outside of Norway. Olaf II managed to bring English clergy to his country. Norway's conversion from the Norse religion to Christianity was mostly the result of English missionaries. As a result of the adoption of Christianity by the monarchy and eventually the entirety of the country, traditional shamanistic practices were marginalized and eventually persecuted. Völvas, practitioners of seid, a Scandinavian pre-Christian tradition, were executed or exiled under newly Christianized governments in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The number of homeless people in Denmark has risen in recent decades, but this has been most pronounced in people that are between 18 and 29 years old (although 30 to 59 years old remains the largest age group, at 70%), women (although men remains the largest group, at 75%) and immigrants (although Danish citizens remain the largest group). Among the foreign, a high percentage are Eastern or Southern European men that seek work in Denmark. Many of these only stay in Denmark during the summer, returning to their respective countries during the relatively cold Danish winter.
Swedish is the official language of Sweden and is spoken by the vast majority of the 10 million inhabitants of the country. It is a North Germanic language and quite similar to its sister Scandinavian languages, Danish and Norwegian, with which it maintains partial mutual intelligibility and forming a dialect continuum. Five "national minority languages" are also recognized by Swedish law: Finnish, Yiddish, Meänkieli, Romani and Sami.
According to the 2016 census, the Navajo Nation had a population of 356,890. According to the same source, 166,826 were Navajo or other Native American (previously reported here as 96% despite actually being only about 47%), 3,249 White, 401 Asian or Pacific Islanders, 208 African American, and the remainder identifying some other group or more than one ancestry. The 2010 census counts 109,963 individuals who report speaking a language at home that is neither Asian nor Indo-European.
DiscoverNavajo.com reports that 96% of the Navajo Nation is American Indian, and 66% of Navajo tribe members live on Navajo Nation.
Islam in Denmark being the country's largest minority religion plays a role in shaping its social and religious landscape. According to a 2018 estimate, a little more than 300.000 people or 5.3% of the population in Denmark is Muslim. The figure has been increasing for the last several decades. In 2009, the U.S. Department of State reported the share as approximately 3.7% of the population. Earlier sources, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, have cited lower percentages. However, according to figures reported by the BBC in 2005, about 270 thousand Muslims lived in Denmark at the time (4.8% out of a population of 5.6 million).
According to the 2016 census, the country's largest self-reported ethnic origin is Canadian (accounting for 32% of the population), followed by English (18.3%), Scottish (13.9%), French (13.6%), Irish (13.4%), German (9.6%), Chinese (5.1%), Italian (4.6%), First Nations (4.4%), Indian (4.0%), and Ukrainian (3.9%). There are 600 recognized First Nations governments or bands, encompassing a total of 1,525,565 people. Canada's indigenous population is growing at almost twice the national rate, and four percent of Canada's population claimed an indigenous identity in 2006. Another 22.3 percent of the population belonged to a non-indigenous visible minority. In 2016, the largest visible minority groups were South Asian (5.6%), Chinese (5.1%) and Black (3.5%). Between 2011 and 2016, the visible minority population rose by 18.4 percent. In 1961, less than two percent of Canada's population (about 300,000 people) were members of visible minority groups. Indigenous peoples are not considered a visible minority under the Employment Equity Act, and this is the definition that Statistics Canada also uses.
Romani (also known as the Romani Chib) is the language spoken by the Romani people, a nomadic ethnic group originating in northern India. Due to the geographic origins of its speakers, Romani is an Indo-Aryan language, closely related to languages spoken in modern-day India, and sometimes written with an Indic Script (see Romani writing systems). Around 90% of Sweden's Romani people speak Romani, meaning that there are approximately 9,500 Chib speakers. In Sweden, there is no major geographic center for Romani like there is for Finnish, Sami, or Meänkieli, but it is considered to be of historical importance by the Swedish government, and as such the government is seen as having an obligation to preserve them, a distinction also held by Yiddish.
Yiddish is a Germanic language with significant Hebrew and Slavic influence, written with a variant of the Hebrew Alphabet (see Yiddish orthography) and, formerly, spoken by most Ashkenazic Jews (although most now speak the language of the country in which they live). Although the Jewish population of Sweden was traditionally Sephardic, after the 18th century, Ashkenazic immigration began, and the immigrants brought with them their Yiddish language (See History of the Jews in Sweden). Like Romani, it is seen by the government to be of historical importance. The organisation "Sällskapet för Jiddisch och Jiddischkultur i Sverige" (Society for Yiddish and Yiddish Culture in Sweden) has over 200 members, many of whom are mother-tongue Yiddish speakers, and arranges regular activities for the speech community and in external advocacy of the Yiddish language.
According to the U.S. Department of State's 2007 International Religious Freedom Report, 'the last credible census was taken in the 1980s', and the religious demographics had to be estimated. The Report found that Islam was the predominant faith in Kosovo, 'professed by most of the majority ethnic Albanian population, the Bosniak, Gorani, and Turkish communities, and some of the Roma/Ashkali/Egyptian community'. About 100,000–120,000 people were Serbs, and these were largely Serbian Orthodox. Approximately 3.4% of ethnic Albanians were Catholics, whereas Protestants comprised a minority of less than 1%, there were only two known families of Jewish origin and no reliable data for atheists. It is also likely that there are some Orthodox Albanians in Kosovo. However, with current tension between Kosovars and Serbs, they may feel as if they do not want to identify as Orthodox, as they may be thought of as ‘Serbs’ because of their Orthodox status. Therefore, they are not represented in the census. Furthermore, the Report claimed that religion was 'not a significant factor in public life. Religious rhetoric was largely absent from public discourse in Muslim communities, mosque attendance was low, and public displays of conservative Islamic dress and culture were minimal.'
According to OSCE estimations, before the Kosovo War of 1999 the municipality had a population of about 145,000, of which 93% were Kosovo Albanians and 7% non-majority communities, including some 3,000 Serbs, who mostly lived in the main town.
Since the late 20th century, new immigrants have arrived from Norway, Russia, and the Mideast. In addition, there are nationals from the UK and other countries who work here for a period of time. Lasse Sigurd Seim, the consul general of the Norwegian Consulate General, Houston, described the estimated 5,000–6,000 Norwegians in the Houston area around 2008 as the largest concentration of ethnic Norwegians outside of Scandinavia. Jenalia Moreno of the "Houston Chronicle" said during that year that the influx of Norwegians into Greater Houston was "relatively new" and related to Norway's also having a major oil industry.
Christianity is the largest religious group. Although more and more ethnic Norwegians are less religious, Christian immigrants have increased the population. Many known Christian missionaries came from Western Norway, for example Torill Selsvold Nyborg, who is now the county mayor of Hordaland.
The majority of Muslims in Norway are Sunni, with a significant Shia minority. 55% lived in the counties of Oslo and Akershus. Scholarly estimates regarding the number of people of Islamic background in Norway vary between 120,000 (2005) and 163,000 (2009). The vast majority have an immigrant background, with Norwegians of Pakistani descent being the most visible and well-known group.
An estimated 21,700 ethnic Vietnamese live in Norway as of 2014, and the country has hosted a Vietnamese community since refugee arrivals after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The Vietnamese are considered one of the best integrated non-western immigrant groups in Norway, with high rates of Norwegian citizenship among immigrants and success rates in education on par with those of ethnic Norwegians.