Christianity in Norway
[2] The Church of Norway receives a fixed sum from the Government not based on membership numbers.
The raids on Ireland, Britain and the Frankish kingdoms had brought the Vikings in touch with Christianity.
[6] Haakon the Good of Norway who had grown up in England tried to introduce Christianity in the tenth century, but had met resistance from pagan leaders and soon abandoned the idea.
[7][8] Anglo-Saxon missionaries from England and Germany engaged in converting Norwegians to Christianity, but with limited success.
[9] The Christians in Norway often established churches or other holy sites at places that had previously been sacred under the Norse religion.
[10] The spread of conversion can be measured by burial sites as Pagans were buried with grave goods while Christians were not.
The above numbers reflect the percentage of the population that are members of a church, typically from being baptized as infants.
Below is a table that compares Norway with other governmental divisions in regular church attendance for the early 21st century (2004–2006).
The constitutional head of the Church is the King of Norway, who is obliged to profess the Lutheran faith.
[28][needs update] The country is divided into three Church districts – the Diocese of Oslo and the prelatures of Trondheim and Tromsø and 32 parishes.
The Catholic Church in Norway is as old as the kingdom itself, dating from approximately 900 A.D., with the first Christian monarchs, Haakon I from 934.
Ethnic Norwegian Catholics are now greatly outnumbered by the immigrants, although the former tend to be far more observant and conservative, being a self-selected group largely of ex-Lutheran converts.
[27] Jehovah's Witnesses is the largest nontrinitarian religious organization in Norway, with a membership of 12,661 in 2020, up from 12,413 in 2016.
In 2022, the group lost its legal status as a religion over their exclusionary policies, although they are not banned within Norway.
