AN: As the title should indicate, this story will mainly be based on events taken from Norwegian history. The first few chapters are a bit slow, but it picks up further on. There will be a bit of DenNor eventually, just so you know that.

I hope you will enjoy the first chapter of a Norwegian history^^

The history books have a story to tell. An explanation of how a country and its people developed over time and in into what it is today. What common people don't know is that every single country has a personification that will represent the land in major events. Ordinary humans don't usually recognize the personifications as countries as they appear like humans themselves and their existence are usually kept secret.

Most of the humans that are able to recognize the personifications for what they are, despise of their ordinary appearance is usually the leader of the country. Sometimes they can sense that the personification is far more than just human, but other times the personification will reveal their true identity to their leader so they can represent their country.

Stone Age (- 1800 B.C.)

In the beginning

Approximately 20000 years ago, the last ice age had its maximum spread of ice. A thick glacier covered large portions of northern Europe, making it impossible for anything to live in the lands before the climate improved and got warm enough to melt away the ice.

One of the countries that were completely covered by an ice so that it left only the highest peaks without a cover of ice, was the country today known as Norway.

The glacier is the force responsible of creating the rough and amazing landscape that is the characteristic of Norway. The mountains standing tall, with their sharp peaks and jagged edges have been carved out by the ice and the fjords are following the valleys that were created by the moving glacier.

It took thousands of years before the climate got warmer and the glacier started retreating. The ice melted and the sea-levels rose. Vegetation could finally begin to take over the landscape that had been left bare and cold, after thousands of years under the ice and allowed for mighty forests to establish. This change in climate made it possible for animals and later humans to settle down in this cold, harsh country.

In the beginning, just after the ice age was over, only a few people inhabited the country, but as time passed by, the number slowly increase. The first people of Norway mostly lived by the ocean, since it provided them with easy to great amounts of fish. They were around boats, as they should be living with the great blue as their closest neighbor. They were also great hunters as well, travelling inlands to hunt game. The land itself provided everything necessary for the people's survival.

In the heart of the forest of southern Norway there lived a boy, looking approximately five years of age all by himself. How long he had been there he could not recall. He only knew it had been for a long time, much more than five years. One can wonder how he was able to survive by himself, since he could not possible be able to provide what he needed for survival on his own.

What kept him alive was the spirits of the forest, providing what he needed of clothes, food and shelter. These creatures and the animals of the forest were all the boy knew in the world, he had never met any of the people living near the ocean. The spirits that took care of him were tiny creatures looking more or less human except from them having wings and they seemed to be surrounded by a shimmering light at all times.

The boy had asked them what they were, because he knew that he was not at all like them. One of them, a girl dressed in a pink tunic with a waistband made of flowers answered him: "We are alfar[1]" She had said in a warm soft voice. "We are creatures of the forest and we tend to all the things living here, be it tree, plant or animal."

The other fairies that had previously been flying randomly around the clearing they were residing in at the moment had gathered in a circle around the boy. They giggled and nodded in agreement to what the pink dressed fairy said. "How do you do that?" the boy asked, for the forest was so big and stretched out for what seemed forever to his young mind. So how could such tiny creatures keep up with it all?

"Magic!" a different fairy screamed enthusiastically and it didn't take long before most of them were chanting the word with all of their might in their tiny, shrill voices, making the boy to giggle.

"Would you like to learn some magic?" The pink fairy asked.

The boy's eyes grew wide with excitement. "But how can I? I'm not an alfer like you."

The pink fairy smiled at him and said: "You are special, even among those of your own kind you are exceptional."

The boy was confused; he had tried to get information out of the elves before. He had asked them if they knew what he was and where he really belonged. They had only given him vague replies and told him that he was exactly where he needed to be, and they would tell him more when it was time. And now they seemed so willing to tell him more than they had ever told before, so the boy just stared at the pink fairy with a questioning look.

One of the other fairies, a male dressed in light green clothes flew up to the pink fairy and whispered something in her ear. Her expression changed and took on a hint of sadness. "We can't keep him in the dark any longer" she said. "The people of this land are beginning to get organized, and they will soon need him."

That sentence caused most of the other fairies to lose their smiles as well, and the boy was left more confused than ever. "We all knew this day was coming, he does after all not belong to us" another fairy cut in.

"I don't understand" the boy said "what are you talking about?"

All of the fairies turned their heads to the one dressed in pink. Apparently they chose her to explain everything for the boy.

She let out a low sigh and with a flutter of wings she flew over to a low branch just in front of the child, who sat down on the ground expecting a story. All the other fairies followed his example and found places to sit down to listen as well. The pink fairy opened her mouth and started the tale that would let the boy know more of who he was.

"The alfar came to this land as soon as the plants started to grow after the great ice melted away. We came here because we are meant to take care of all things growing. When the plants came, so did the animals and after them the humans came to dwell here as well. And it was a while after the humans have settled down that you came to be. You may look like the humans do, but you are not like them. We know this because we could sense you, and that means you have magic. And when we found you we realized what you really are, and we decided that we needed to take care of you, since a small child cannot survive alone."

Then one of the fairies clearly lost her patience "You're avoiding the answer!" she nearly screamed in frustration. "You can try to drag out the time by telling the story, but we cannot protect him from the rest of the world forever. He is the spirit of this land and is linked to its people. He needs to be with them even if they seem like brutes to us! The link between him and his people will never develop if he stays with us and he might cease to exist if that happens"

This caused some of the fairies to go pale and e few even started crying. The boy was left speechless and confused. He understood that he had to go live with these humans that he had never met. The fairies seemed to dislike then, considering that they had never mentioned their existence to him earlier. He wished he could forget the entire conversation and live on in the same way they all had done for so long. The fairies explanation wasn't exactly good, but somehow he felt he understood what he was.

There was a long time with intense silence. The boy looked at the pink dressed fairy, which looked away shamefully. He tried looking to the other fairies for more answers, but most of them turned their gaze to the ground or hid their faces behind their hands to avoid him.

So the boy stood up and walked away from the clearing they had been in. None of the Fairies said anything; they all knew he needed some time alone to think things over and sort out his thoughts. But as soon as he was out of earshot, the fairies started screaming at each other, throwing blame and insults around.

The young boy was wandering aimlessly around in the forest for several hours just thinking for himself. He didn't really know what to believe. He would need more of an explanation to understand what exactly it meant to be the spirit of a land, but he was too angry to be in the presence of the fairies at the moment. They had known what he was all along and they had kept it a secret from him. He just needed to cool down, and he would talk with them later.

The darkness was sneaking in over the land, and it was just what the boy had been waiting for. "Mose[2]?" He whispered out in the dark of his surroundings.

It was silent for several minutes, not a breath of wind was heard, and the trees held back their rustling of leaves. Then the boy finally heard the sounds of heavy footsteps in the distance, slowly getting closer. And not long after a gigantic shadow appeared between the trees.

The creature getting closer was huge; it bent the trees out of the way in order to make his way to the clearing where the boy was waiting. The creature had a dark grey tone of skin, and looked more or less like a moving boulder. There were a couple of small branches growing straight out of its skin and large portions of its body were covered in moss, which was the reason behind the creature's name. This creature and the others of his kind would later be known to the humans as a troll.

The huge creature had an appearance that would scare pretty much anybody or anything that was unlucky enough to catch a glimpse of it. But the boy was not scared, nor had he ever been. He had lived with the fairies during daytime, but in the nights as soon as the sun set, the trolls would awake and walk about in the forest, and sometimes they would meet the boy and spend time with him.

They had never acted aggressive towards him; they had even brought him game they had hunted in the forest. But they weren't among the most brilliant of creatures, so they didn't realize the boy would need the food cooked. The boy still appreciated the gesture, and he had befriended a few of them. One of them was the troll he came to know by the name of Mose.

The troll made a dark rumbling sound and stopped walking when he had arrived just in front of the boy who looked up at him with big blue eyes. "You called" the troll said with its dark booming voice.

The boy nodded and said: "I have something I need to talk to you about."

The troll didn't say anything at first. It brought its hand down to the ground and the boy climbed in. He then proceeded to lift the boy up to his eye level. "What?" The troll asked.

Mose and the other trolls had never been very talkative. If the boy ever wanted to talk to them, he had to stand for the conversation by himself. The trolls would respond by making deep rumbling noises instead of words, only using a difference in pitch to get their point across. They didn't like to use the human tongue; the words never came out right for them. They would only use it to make the boy more at ease in their presence.

The boy made himself comfortable in the hand of the troll. He knew he was likely to stay there for a while. "It was something the alfar said…"

Mose grunted in disapproval, he didn't much like the fairies. They were too happy and never shut up. The boy ignored the troll and kept talking partially to Mose and partially to himself.

He told Mose what the fairies had told him about there being humans living along the coast, and that there was a link between him and these people because apparently he was the personification of their country. And then he realized that he didn't really know anything else, because he had run off before they could tell him.

He did regret it now, running off. He would have known so much more if he had just had patience enough and kept his emotions in control long enough for them to tell him.

"Mose?" the boy asked. "Did you know about me?"

The troll made some dark rumbling noises again before he opened his mouth. "I just knew you were special." And with those words Mose went silent again.

The boy let out a sigh. "I don't want to be with these people, I want to stay in the forests and the mountains." Mose still didn't reply; he just sat there silently on his rock in the middle of the clearing.

Bitter tears ran down the boy's cheek, he somehow knew that there was nothing to do with the situation. This was his fate, and he had to surrender to it, he could not hide away forever. Mose still did not move, and the boy didn't really want to talk anymore, so he just curled up in the trolls open hand and fell asleep to the sounds of the forest.

The boy woke up in the clearing when the first rays of sunlight hit his face. Somehow Mose had been able to put him down on the ground during the night, without waking him. He had probably gone hunting, or he was hiding in the shadows so the sun would not turn him to stone.

It was time for him to go back to the fairies anyways. He was hungry now and they still had more to tell him. The anger and frustration he felt the day before was now tucked away in the corners of his mind, he was ready to face them.

They must have known he would come back, because they were all gathered already and kept silent until he sat down in front of them. Like the day before, the fairy dressed in pink took the lead. "Do you understand what we told you yesterday?" She asked.

The boy nodded slowly. "Some of it, but not all… Somehow I am connected to the people living in this land. I am them in a way, I think."

The pink fairy smiled sadly. "It's amazing how fast you understand as soon as we made you open your eyes. There is more, but we don't remember anymore and we don't recall how we even came by this knowledge."

A new fairy stepped forward. She was older than most of the others, having soft wrinkles in her face. Some were around here mouth and eyes from smiling, but there were also some spread on her forehead that must have come from times of worry.

"My sweet boy" the fairy said, in a soft and gentle voice. "There will come a time when people of this land will become a great nation. Right now their numbers only count a few thousand souls, but one day they will be many more. They will grow a feeling of who they are, and you are all of them. All of their consciousnesses are represented by you. And in time they will find a leader, and their leader will be yours." The fairy stopped talking and sighed deeply. She just looked at the boy, noticing his lack of a real emotional response.

"Why would any force make it so?" The boy asked, his voice shaking slightly. "Such a task would be too great for any creature of this world. There is no way I can represent all the people of this country, I am just a boy."

Those sentences earned him more sad looks from the fairies before the elder one started talking again. "I know sweet boy, I know. But that is the way things are supposed to be. And you will find that you are stronger than you think. You will be able to do what is necessary."

The child's blue eyes were filling with tears, but none of them fell. The elderly fairy flapped her wings and floated just in front of the boy, to put a small hand on his cheek, and proceeded to wipe away the unshed tears. "You don't have to leave just yet. There is still some time before you need to be with your people, and I believe that our pink dressed friend here asked you if you wanted to learn magic." She smiled to the boy, and she could see just the tiniest hint of a smile cross his lips despite his sadness.

The times when the boy would spend his day wandering around the forest and climbing the surrounding hills without a worry in the world were nearing their end. The fairies had decided that they should teach him about the humans before they let the boy go to live with his people. They spend a lot of time just observing the people of the closest village from a distance.

For the villages years went by where they were unknowingly being observed, and the boy soon noticed something that made him a lot different from the others and so he asked the fairies about his observations.

"Why do these humans change appearance?" He asked. "When we first started watching them there was some that was the same size as me, and now they are half as tall as Mose."

One fairy dressed in green poked her head out from the leaves she was hiding in. "It's called growing up. Humans start out all tiny, but as time passes they become taller and stronger, until one day they die and are gone."

The boy remained silent in thought for a while.

"I look so much like them" He said after a few minutes in thoughts. "How come I don't change appearance? I have looked like this as long as I can remember."

The fairy sighed. "You have lived with us through many human lifetimes, and you have looked the same during all that time. You will keep on living as long as your people hold land and keep a memory of who they really are."

"So I will never grow up?" The boy asked with a hint of sadness in his voice. He had hoped he would at least become a little bit taller. The people in the village that were bigger looking than him seemed to be capable of more than the smaller ones. They ran around between the buildings at amazing speeds and fought playfully among themselves. The smaller ones sometimes tried to keep up, but could never match the speed and strength of the others.

"No!" The fairy almost screamed desperately. Some of the village's people were looking in their direction; they must have heard the noise. So the boy and the fairy quickly hid themselves among the branches and leaves.

Luckily for them, nobody came to investigate any further. So the fairy started talking again. "That is not what I meant at all. You will grow up one day, but for now your people are still young, and so you will remain so as well." She was frustrated, which could clearly be heard on the high pitch her voice had reached.

"But how can a people grow up?" The boy asked in a whisper "The humans live for such a short time and then they are gone. How can they ever develop?"

The fairy tried to calm down a bit so she could lower her voice before she answered. It would be for the best if the humans did not discover them hiding in the bushes. "The elders will teach their younger all they know and the younglings will learn new things their parents never knew of. And so the youngest will be more learned than the ones before them. And that's the way a people grow up." At least that was as close as the fairy could explain it all.

The boy and the fairy went silent again and continued watching the village. "Miss fairy?" the boy said. "What is a parent?"

The fairy let out a sigh at the question. There were so many things the boy did not understand. How could she explain what parent was to a boy that had never had any? It had been hard enough to tell him about death of humans. In one of the first weeks of watching the village one of the elder men had died.

The people had been mourning as they had carried the dead in blankets and buried him outside of the village. The boy had wondered what had happened, and why everyone looked so sad, and the fairies had been forced to tell him about death. The boy had been so distressed by this conversation, so they had never gotten to tell him about how new humans came to be, and how they grow up.

But now the green dressed fairy suspected it was time for that conversation as well. "We should head back to the others" she said. She did not want to be the one to teach the boy any more today. One of the others would have to do that. She was certain that the child would be saddened to learn that he didn't have any parents or siblings. He had after all been curious to why the younger ones in the village had clung to some of the elders, and why they seemed as happy as they did so.

They boy would never feel the loving touch from a mother or father, he could only observe as others got it. This was one of the many reasons why the fairies never wanted to let the child in to the reality of the world he would live in. There was no way of knowing what would happen to him in the future, for a country will over time go through plenty of trials.

The boy nodded and started crawling out of the bushes they had hid in; apparently he had forgotten the question about what parents are. The green fairy flapped her wings and flew just behind him as they headed back to where the fairies would be held up.

The boy was running excitably through the forest. He had only stopped briefly in the clearing of the fairies. The green fairy had stayed behind with the rest of them and he had rushed away as fast as his short legs could carry him.

He just wanted to get a break from it all. He had grown tired of learning the ways of the humans.

Nature was more to his liking. It was wild and beautiful, bit still logical and he understood how it worked. He knew the way of the forest, the majestic stillness of the mountains and the wild beauty of the sea. And now, thanks to the fairies he knew the magic hidden behind every single aspect of nature. Magic was way more fun than learning about the humans, and he had taken to it quickly. He could draw strength from nature and bend some of the surroundings to his will if he only set his mind to it.

None of the fairies followed the child as he ran off. He had done that a lot lately. They all knew that his time to go be with the humans was getting close, and none of them knew how to react to the situation. They all had lived together out in the wilderness for so long; it had seemed unlikely that things would ever have to change, but now they were.

They been singing less lately, they could not find it in their hearts to sing the way they had used to, carefree and happy. Instead they would just do their duties to the nature in silence.

"How long do we have left with him?" one of the fairies asked while they were tending some of the birch trees growing close to the clearing.

A second one flew up next to her and angrily slapped her on the back of the head. "Don't say it like that!" she screamed. "He is not dying. He is just not going to live with us anymore. We can still see him from time to time."

"But what if he forgets us?" The first fairy whined as she rubbed the bump on her head. "He is still angry with us for keeping him in the dark most of his life. Does he even want to see us?"

A few more weeks went by and the fairies taught the boy everything they knew about the humans living both in the village closest to their clearing and in other parts of the country. They had told him that there were other countries out in the world and they all had a spirit to represent its people. They had told him all but one single thing.

The day had finally come. All the fairies of the nearby area had gathered and they had asked some of the trolls to meet up as well. They had gotten a hold of some of the other mythical creatures of the land, and they were waiting for the boy to come back to the clearing when night fell upon them. When he arrived and noticed them, he knew immediately.

"It's time isn't it?" he asked silently.

The elder fairy nodded slowly and stepped forward. "There is only one more thing we need to tell you about before we take you to the humans. You need to know your name."

The group gathered stayed silent to let the words sink in.

"Name?"

The boy's question surprised no one. He had never been taught the principle of names. "Name yes." The fairy said. "The only one you have ever known by any name is our beloved troll here, Mose. Every being out there has its own name. Not just a name that defines what kind of being they are, but a name that defines the individual alone." This statement achieved a grunt of approval from Mose and the other trolls present.

"So… Do I have a name?" the boy asked.

For the first time in a long while, the fairies smiled again, the elder brighter than all the others. "Oh you most certainly do sweet child." She said brightly. "We have known it for a while now. We have heard it on the wind, and tasted it on the air. We will tell it to you, but your people are still not quite ready to know."

This statement gained a bright smile from the boy as well. It was obvious that he was exited to find out. "I will keep it secret! I promise!" The boy said loud and clear, locking his dark blue eyes with the fairy.

"Your one true name, the name you must always remember. Over time the tongue of the humans change and the name of their land might change with it, but you must carry this one true name with you in your heart."

The gathered creatures still carried smiles, but now with a hint of serious features on their faces. The boy kept his gaze locked with the fairy and whispered in a tone that was far more grown up than they had ever heard before. "I understand."

"The country that is yours lies close to the ice that ever covers the sea in the north. And the way there by sea goes all the way along your lands, so the name your country carries means: The way north. And your name is Norðvegr."

"Norðvegr" The boy repeated, letting the name roll of his tongue a couple of times. He smiled for himself. It felt right, so very right. That was his name, and one day he would find out for sure who he really is.

"I am ready." He said. His voice filled with determination.

"Indeed you are our sweet boy." The elder fairy said with a smile still lingering on her lips. "We cannot venture to close to the village; the humans should not see creatures like us. But you have magic and will always be able to call on us. You have already done that to Mose several times, just by calling his name you have drawn him to you. And should you need me, you can just call my name, Álfdís and I will find you. The only thing you have to do to be able to summon us, any one of us is to remember. We can be out of sight but…"

"Not out of mind" the boy finished for her.

The elder fairy kept her smile, but said nothing further. The other fairies started giggling and laughing and most of them flew over to hug the boy one last time before he went to the humans.

Some of the trolls grunted and the boy gently shook off the fairies so he could go over and hug the leg of Mose and a few of the other trolls present.

Then the elder fairy flew over to take him by his hand to lead him over to where he knew the humans lived. While walking the boy took in as many sensations as he could, savoring every last impression from the life he would leave behind.

He would still be able to enjoy nature. But it would never be the same. He would never have the same freedom to roam aimlessly around as he pleased. He would become one with his people, and he would learn how to live with them as the personification of their country. They would be his number one priority from now on.

He was Norðvegr.

[1] Alfer – Fairies

[2] Mose (Norwegian) = moss (the plant growth)