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Introducing Mystery Class #8
Frøya Island, Norway (63.733
N, 8.833 E)
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On the map of the world you will see that Norway is situated far to the north in the western corner of Europe. Norway shares borders with Sweden, Finland and Russia, but our largest neighbour is the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Our country's official name is the Kingdom of Norway, which in addition to the mainland includes the Svalbard archipelago and Jan Mayen. Norway also has territories in the Antarctic region. These are Bouvet Island and Peter I Island.
Culture
Our most famous author, Henrik Ibsen, found inspiration in folk tales when writing his play "Peer Gynt" and most people have heard "In the Hall of the Mountain King", music which was written for the play by Edvard Grieg, one of our greatest composers. Although Norwegian children are proud of Edvard Grieg, they do not listen to his music very much. Like other young people, they are more interested in rock and pop music. Their favourites include both Norwegian groups and foreign artists. The Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch, is today regarded as one of the greatest of modern artists. Although he is perhaps most famous for the painting "Scream", he painted many other outstanding works.
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Henrik Ibsen |
Edvard Grieg |
Edvard Munch's |
System of government
Norway is a constitutional monarchy, which means that the constitution decrees that
the country shall be ruled by a monarch. The king and his family have no real political
power but are an i
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The Storting is Norway's national assembly and consists of 165 representatives from 19 counties.
Environment
Most Norwegians live in close contact with nature. This explains why many of us, particularly children, are concerned about the environment and the protection of natural resources. Industrial and commercial activities do not always put nature first. Therefore we have many laws and regulations to protect nature and animal life and to ensure that the environment is safeguarded and natural resources exploited in a sensible way.
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Frøya is an island on the coast of Norway, outside of Trondheims fjord. There are about 4000 people living on the main island and many small islands out in the sea. Traditionaly we lived on fishing but now we are Norway's and they say the world's biggest producer of cultured fish. We slaughter 100 tonnes of salmon and trout every day! We are about 400 pupils in gradeschool at 6 different schools.
Frøya Municipal Music and Culture school
We are a school for children who want to learn how to play an instrument, sing, dance and paint pictures. We are 120 children and 10 teachers. The teachers travel from school to school, sometimes by boat to teach us.
We, like most children, like to listen to music, play soccer and watch TV. Almost every home has satellite disk and computers and Internet so we are very international oriented. The newest thing is cell phones. Everybody has one.
And like we say goodbye in Norwegian, "Ha det bra", directly translated "Have it good".
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