Music
*  composer Edvard Grieg
*  international star soprano Kirsten Flagstad

Theatre
*  Henrik Ibsen playwright of Peer Gynt and darkly realistic dramas such as The Wild Duck and A Doll's House.

Art *  Edvard Munch expressionist painter world famous for The Scream, a painting that seems to picture the anxiety of modern man. Winter sports Norway hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer

Food and drink
Norwegian cuisine has a stronger focus on game and fish readily sourced from its mountain wilderness and from the sea. Fish dishes are based on such species as salmon, cod, herring, sardine, and mackerel. Seafood is used fresh, smoked, salted or pickled. Game food includes mountain hare, duck, rock ptarmigan and fowl, often served with rich sauces spiced with crushed juniper berries or lingonberry jam on the side.

A typical Norwegian dessert is wild cloudberries with cream. Most Norwegians regularly eat bread, usually grovbrød, or "coarse bread", made with whole-grain flour. Cheeses - Jarlsberg is a well-known Norwegian export; geitost, a caramelised cheese from goats milk, usually sliced very thinly using a metal cheese slicer.

Drink - akevitt, a yellow-tinged liquor spiced with caraway seeds. Sale of wine and spirits is structly controlled, being available only during daytime hours from government-owned Vinmonopolet shops.

Famous people Roald Amundsen was an explorer who led the Antarctic expedition becoming the first to reach the South Pole in December 1911.

Film location   The country has been the location for several internationally produced films. In the Star Wars saga The Empire Strikes Back the Hardangerjøkulen glacier was the location for scenes of the ice planet Hoth. The films Heroes of Telemark, James Bond's Die Another Day and The Golden Compass had scenes set in Norway.