During 2025, Statistics Norway has digitized and published historical time series for foreign trade in goods. This rich data foundation has been used in this report, and hopefully readers will be inspired to make use of the data themselves as well.
The period from 1866 to today is a long one, and during this time much has happened, which is also reflected in the statistics. This report can, of course, not cover everything that has occurred over all these years. A lot has happened, and in brief we can point to important events such as the introduction of the Norwegian krone, the change to metric units, industrialization, the dissolution of the union with Sweden, Norwegian shipping in both headwinds and tailwinds, two world wars, depression, oil and gas, pandemic, etc.
When looking at the total figures for Norway’s foreign trade in goods and measuring this as shares of total value creation (gross domestic product – GDP), it is clear that trade with other countries has been and remains important for the country. The scope of trade in goods, that is, the sum of import and export values, has for most of the period been between 45 and slightly over 50 percent of GDP. There are, of course, nuances. At the beginning of the period, trade was considerably lower, but over the years leading up to World War I, the scope of trade steadily increased from just over 30 percent to about 50 percent of GDP. The interwar period was marked by difficult times, also in foreign trade. Up to World War II, foreign trade in goods measured as a share of GDP fell to below 35 percent and then plunged further during the war. A low point was reached in 1944, when the share of GDP was down to about 13 percent.
After World War II, trade increased quickly and significantly, remaining around 45 percent of GDP throughout the 1950s and 1960s. From about the mid-1970s, trade in goods rose further and has remained at shares around 50 percent – with some larger deviations in recent years due to major international events that have affected Norwegian foreign trade, such as the financial crisis, pandemic, and explosive gas prices.
Ideally, trade in services should also have been included in such a report. For example, the considerable export revenues from Norwegian shipping are not captured here. The reason for this is lack of data, as statistics on trade in services were established much later than for trade in goods.
When examining which countries have been and still are our most important partners in trade in goods, we find a high degree of stability over the nearly 160 years covered by the report. The United Kingdom has throughout the entire period been a central trading partner, especially on the export side. Another significant trading partner throughout the period is Germany, and in addition we have always exchanged goods with our closest neighbours Sweden and Denmark – naturally, one might say. Other European countries that can be mentioned in this context are the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Spain. Early in the period and up to World War I, Russia was also a notable trading partner. The USA has also been an important trading partner, especially after the two world wars. From the 1960s onward, an Asian country appears with growing trade with Norway – Japan.
From the mid-1990s onward, changes in trade are of course largely linked to China becoming an increasingly dominant player. China’s share of imports rises rapidly and roughly sextuples over 30 years. Despite this, when looking at the total value of trade, the United Kingdom and Germany remain our clearly most important trading partners – as they were in 1866.
Although the number of countries we trade with has increased significantly during the period, most of the trade still takes place with a relatively small number of countries – today as 160 years ago.