The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF NORWAY, 161deaneries (provstier), 441 parishes (prwstegjdd), and 909 pastorates (sognc). Allother worships enjoy perfect toleration, but Nonconformists number altogetherscarcely more than 6,300.Military service is obligatory on all Norwegians upwards of twenty-five yearsold, ecclesiastics, pilots, and the inhabitants of Finmark alone excepted. But thearmy consists in reality of little more than the cadres, the battalions under drill,and military schools. The regular forces consist of less than 2,000 men,all volunteers, enlisted for three years. Conscripts pass through the recruitingschool,which lasts forty-two days for the infantry, ninety for the artillery andcavalry, and return for three or four years to take part in the exercises for lessthan one month annually. The King is empoweredby the constitution to keep a guard ofFig. 81.—Vardo.Norwegian volunteers in Stockholm, and to removeScale 1 : 100.000.3,000 men from one state to the other forthe manoeuvres, but for no other purpose.The navy is relatively much more importantthan the army, comprising (1879), 4 monitorsand 26 other steamers, with 144 guns, besides92 sailing and rowing vessels. Fortificationsdefend the entrance of Christiania-fiord, whereis situated Horten, the chief naval station, andthere are a few other defensive works at certainexposed points of the coast. Of these thenorthernmost in Norway and in the world isthat of Vardo, at the entrance of Yarangerfiord,beyond the seventieth parallel and withinthe arctic circle. The crews, numbering 2,050,are nearly all volunteers, and all between theages of twenty-two and thirty-five engaged inshipping or fishing, or resident in the seaports,are enrolled to the number of 60,000, withliability to be called out in case of nationaldanger.The Norwegian Budget is generally balanced,and amounted in 1877-8 to £2,235,000, more than half derived from the customs.The chief outlay is not, as mostly elsewhere, for war expenses or in payment of oldobligations, although the debt amounted in 1878 to £5,130,000, contracted mainlyfor the construction of railwavs.Administratively the country is divided into 517 communes, of which 61 areurban and 456 rural (Jierreder). Municipal affairs are managed by two electivebodies, an administrative council (formandskab) of from three to twelve members,and a representative council (reprmsenfantskab) three times more numerous. Theexecution of their decisions is intrusted in the towns to magistrates (borgesmcsterand radmand) named by the King, in the rural communes to prefects (amtmand)