It is bordered by Norway on the west, Finland on the northeast, the Skagerrak Strait and the Kattegat Strait on the southwest, and the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia on the east.
Norway was one of the signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 and was a founding member of the United Nations, providing its first secretary general – Trygve Lie.
Norway straddles the North Atlantic Ocean for its entire length, bound by three different seas: the North Sea to the southwest and its large inlet the Skagerrak to the south, the Norwegian Sea to the west and the Barents Sea to the northeast.