Events
- 1 January – Same-sex marriage became legal in Norway when a gender neutral marriage bill was enacted after being passed by the Norwegian legislature in June 2008. Norway became the first Scandinavian country and the sixth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.
- 1 January – the new Norwegian prostitution law (Sexkjøpsloven) bans the buying of sexual favours rather than selling (the client commits a crime, but not the prostitute).
- 10 March – Varg Vikernes is released on parole having served almost 16 years of a 21 years (life) sentence for murder.
- 31 July – Full City oil spill: the Panama-flagged bulk carrier, Full City, operated by COSCO, experienced engine failure and ran aground near Langesund, Telemark, Norway during a storm, spilling 200 tons of heavy bunker fuel oil in a sensitive wildlife area.
- 14 September – The 2009 Parliamentary election takes place. Although the opposition received more votes, the governing Red-Green Coalition obtained more seats in parliament. This allowed Jens Stoltenberg to continue as prime minister.
- 9 December – The Norwegian spiral anomaly initially shook thousands of witnesses in Northern Norway, as well as people across the globe, when what was later explained as a misfired Russian missile caused a spectacular light formation in the sky. The phenomenon was observed in the dark morning sky from Trøndelag through Finnmark.
- 10 December – The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to US President Barack Obama in Oslo.
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Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjørn Jagland presents President Barack Obama with the Nobel Prize medal and diploma during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Rådhuset Main Hall at Oslo City Hall
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Jens Stoltenberg continue as prime minister following the 2009 Parliamentary election
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Full City oil spill
Read more about this topic: 2009 In Norway
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape ... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.”
—Marilyn French (b. 1929)