To Norway
Queen of the Atlantic – Stavangerfjord
Most Norwegians traveled home by ship that belonged to the Norwegian American Line (NAL): Kristianiafjord, Bergensfjord or Stavangerfjord. Kristianiafjord was the company’s first boat, and was put into operation in 1913. But it was Stavangerfjord that became the most popular. From 1918 to 1963, the “Queen of the Atlantic” had transported more than 640,000 passengers across the Atlantic. It was almost a party in the city when Stavangerfjord came to Stavanger with friends and relatives who came home.
Influence from the USA The returnees brought with them a number of new things. New words, building customs, clothes and fashions, ideologies and philosophies. Many of them showed an openness that helped to change ingrained attitudes in the old European agricultural society. The return migration also helped to gradually reduce the cultural differences between America and Europe.
The influence from the USA gradually became very noticeable. In 1896, the world’s first public cinema show was shown in the United States. Eight years later, in 1904, the first cinema was opened in Oslo. Ten years later, there were more than 150 cinemas across the country. Half of the films shown were American. And the America that was portrayed in many of these films had an enormous influence all over the world. The films were mainly based on notions of the Wild West and heroes such as Buffalo Bill and Nick Carter who were already known through popular literature. In this way, American film, music and the entertainment industry had a significant influence on cultural development in Europe and Norway.
Today, American brands and symbols have become part of Norwegian everyday life.
Norway today The flow of immigration and emigration can often be explained as an interplay between national and international economic conditions. economic growth and wealth in post-war Norway and new immigrant quotas in the United States in the 1960s reduced emigration to America. Only 49,500 Norwegians left between 1946 and 1978. Immigration
Today, emigration has been replaced by immigration. At the beginning of 2007, there were 4,681,100 people living in the country. About 415,000 of these were immigrants, which corresponds to 8.9 percent of the entire population. The Swedes make up the largest group of first-generation immigrants with almost 23,424 people. People from the third world make up more than half of the immigrants. Almost a third of all members of the immigrant population live in Oslo. This is followed by Bergen, Stavanger, Bærum and Trondheim. In the last 10 years, the immigrant population has increased by 72 percent.
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The ten largest nationality groups. First- generation immigrants |
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First generation immigrants |
Persons born in Norway to two foreign parents |
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| Total* |
341 930 |
Total* |
75 488 |
| Sweden |
23 424 |
Pakistan |
12 526 |
| Poland |
17 747 |
Vietnam |
6 374 |
| Denmark |
17 621 |
Turkey |
4 971 |
| Iraq |
17 246 |
Somalia |
4 958 |
| Pakistan |
15 752 |
Sri Lanka |
4 642 |
| Somalia |
14 698 |
Iraq |
4 172 |
| Germany |
13 494 |
Morocco |
2 770 |
| Bosnia – Herzegovina |
13 266 |
India |
2 543 |
| Vietnam |
12 409 |
Bosnia and Herzegovina |
2 401 |
| Iran |
12 308 |
Serbia |
2 395 |
* Applies to all countries
Source: Statistics Norway