[sira04]

It's a common myth, but he wasn't drunk, and the deal didn't happen that day. Several meetings later with several more officials and the deal went through 2 years after that negotiation. They basically placed the line in the middle, and the norwegians got lucky.

[vegardx]

It fits so well with the Norwegian stereotyping of Danish people, which is likely the reason why so many believe in it. It's also worth noting that Denmark also have quite a large oil industry.

Another myth seems to be that Norway was a very poor nation before the discovery of oil. According to Jan Eivind Myhre[0], professor emeritus in history at the University of Oslo, this isn't true. Norway has been one of the wealthiest countries in Europe for hundreds of years. We had, and to some degree still have, a huge merchant fleet. We've always been big in shipping insurance, probably a by-product of the merchant fleet. The fishing industry has always been a huge part of the economy, same with raw materials.

It's an interesting read, but perhaps a bit more debatable than the myth about a drunk danish minister.

[0] https://www.sciencenorway.no/economy-history/crushing-the-my...

[kaon123]

Fascinating. Maybe a similar mental model applies as in Switzerland. I am a foreigner living in wealthy Switzerland. They also talk about themselves as being very poor a few decades ago. Maybe it is that people really were poor back then, just not as poor as the other europeans, and this for them is hard to imagine.

According to the statistics that I can find, they have been one of the wealthiest european nations for 250 years now, with GDP per capita being 50% higher than the Netherlands consistently for the past 70 years.

[hilux]

You appear to be Norwegian.

I have to ask my standard question: have you met Magnus Carlsen??

What's he like when speaking Norwegian? [I.e. is he different than his English-speaking persona?]