Beloved for its immense fjords and snowy mountains, its fetching villages and thickly forested countrysides, Norway is a deeply peaceful and brainily designed society, peopled by what Karl Baedecker called a "sincere and honest" population, "free from conventional cant."

• TOTAL AREA: 324,220 sq km

• LAND AREA: 307,860 sq km

• WATER AREA: 16,360 sq km

• POPULATION: 4,610,820

• RELIGIONS: Church of Norway 85.7%, Pentecostal 1%, Roman Catholic 1%, other Christian 2.4%, Muslim 1.8%, other 8.1%

• LANGUAGES: Bokmal Norwegian (official), Nynorsk Norwegian (official), small Sami- and Finnish-speaking minorities and official in six municipalities

• GOVERNMENT TYPE: Constitutional Monarchy

• CAPITAL CITY: Oslo

• OFFICIAL CURRENCY: Norwegian krone (NOK)

• TIME ZONE: GMT/UTC +1