The municipality lies in the eastern Hunsrück nestled within a greenbelt of woodland and meadowland, roughly 3 km southeast of Emmelshausen, right on Schinderhannes-Radweg (cycle path).

Norath's name comes from the old word rod, from the same stem as the German verb roden, meaning “clear (woods, trees)”.

About 1000 BC, it seems that the Celts, coming from the east, crossed the Rhine and settled the lands between that river on the one side and the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees on the other.

Germanic peoples from east of the Rhine, however, eventually crossed the river, too, invaded the Celts’ lands and dislodged them therefrom.

The Romans called the lands between the Rhine and the Atlantic Ocean Gallia (rendered “Gaul” in English), and their rule lasted more than 500 years.

Even today, an old Roman road runs from Bingen by way of Rheinböllen, Kisselbach, Maisborn, Pfalzfeld, Norath, Dörth and Pfaffenheck to Koblenz.

In 455, under Merovingian King Childeric I, the Franks put an end to Roman rule throughout the Middle Rhine region and established their own ascendancy over it.

After the partition of the Carolingian Empire in the 843 Treaty of Verdun, Norath passed to the Dukedom of Lotharingia, named after Emperor Lothair I.

After Lothair II's death, Charles the Bald of France and Louis the German agreed in the 870 Treaty of Meerssen that all the late Lothair's lands on the Moselle's and the Meuse's left bank were to pass to Charles, while all those east of these rivers were to belong to the German Empire.

To break their power, the Dukedom was sundered in 959 into two parts, Upper and Lower Lotharingia, lying south and north of Andernach respectively.

At the time of the Reformation, Lord of Beilstein and Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel Philip I's conversion to Lutheran teaching meant that everyone on the Vogtei of Pfalzfeld, and therefore in Norath, too, had to do the same.

After they had occupied the whole left bank of the Rhine, Norath belonged to the subprefecture of Simmern, the canton of St. Goar and the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Pfalzfeld.

It ended quickly enough with the War of the Sixth Coalition and then the Congress of Vienna, under which the Rhine's left bank was assigned in 1815 to the Kingdom of Prussia, and along with it, so was Norath.

More locally, Norath found itself in the Rhine Province, the Regierungsbezirk of Koblenz, the district of St. Goar and the mayoral Amt of Pfalzfeld.

Modern amenities, such as watermains, sewers, tarred streets and freezing facilities have changed the village's face.