Ringerike

'Ringerike' officially The Kingdom of Ringerike, (Norsk: Kongedømmet Ringerike): is a country situated off the northern coast of Artemia. The Capital city and seat of executive power is the city of Kongensheim. Ringerike has a total area of 342,987 square kilometres and a population of 32,236,000 (as of August 2016). Ringerike is bordered by (Unknown), and the Skagerrak strait to the south, with continental Artemia on the other side. Ringerike has an extensive coastline, facing the Boreal Ocean and the Skagerrak strait. The maritime influence also dominates Ringerikes's climate with mild lowland temperatures on the sea coasts, whereas the interior, while colder, is also a lot milder than areas elsewhere in the world on such northerly latitudes. Even during polar night, temperatures around freezing are commonplace on the eastern coastline. The maritime influence brings high rainfall and snowfall to some areas of the country.

Haakon VI of the House of Alta is the current King of Ringerike. Nils Olav Jagland has been prime minister since 2016. As a unitary sovereign state with a constitutional monarchy, Ringerike divides state power between the Storting, the cabinet and the supreme court, as determined by the 1676 constitution. The kingdom was established in 670 as a merger of many petty kingdoms and has existed continuously for since then.

Ringerike maintains a welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system, and its values are rooted in egalitarian ideals. The Ringerike state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, having extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, and fresh water. The resource production industry accounts for a significant portion of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Prehistory (c.4000BC-2500BC)
Evidence of human habitation has been found dating back as far as the end of the last ice age, as the glaciers retreated north, humans followed them, surviving on the newly growing flora and the fauna which followed, however there is little to suggest that these peoples had any form of society outside of family groups and tribes born of convenience and to counter territorial threats.

More recent finds along the entire coast revealed to archaeologists that the difference between the two can simply be ascribed to different types of tools and not to different cultures. Coastal fauna provided a means of livelihood for fishermen and hunters, who may have made their way along the southern coast about 10,000 BC when the interior was still covered with ice. It is now thought that these so-called "Proto-Nordic" peoples came from the south and followed the coast northward considerably later.

In the southern part of the country are dwelling sites dating from about 4,000 BC. Finds from these sites give a clearer idea of the life of the hunting and fishing peoples. The implements vary in shape and mostly are made of different kinds of stone; those of later periods are more skilfully made. Rock carvings (i.e. petroglyphs) have been found, usually near hunting and fishing grounds. They represent game such as deer, reindeer, elk, bears, birds, seals, whales, and fish (especially salmon and halibut), all of which were vital to the way of life of the coastal peoples. The rock carvings at Alta were made at sea level from 4,200 to 500 BC and mark the progression of the land as the sea rose after the last ice age ended.

Bronze Age (2500BC-500BC)
Around 2500 BC, new settlers arrived in southern Ringerike. They were Artemian farmers who grew grain and kept cows and sheep. The current hunting-fishing population of the area was also gradually replaced by farmers, though hunting and fishing remained useful secondary means of livelihood.

From about 1500 BC, bronze was gradually introduced, but the use of stone implements continued; Ringerike had few riches to barter for bronze goods, and the few finds consist mostly of elaborate weapons and brooches that only chieftains could afford. Huge burial cairns built close to the sea as far north as Jokullshavn and also inland in the south are characteristic of this period. The motifs of the rock carvings differ slightly from those typical of the Stone Age. Representations of the Sun, animals, trees, weapons, ships, and people are all strongly stylised.

Thousands of rock carvings from this period depict ships, and the large stone burial monuments known as stone ships, suggest that ships and seafaring played an important role in the culture at large. The depicted ships most likely represent sewn plank built canoes used for warfare, fishing and trade. These ship types may have their origin as far back as the neolithic period

Iron Age (500BC-670AD)
Little has been found dating from the early Iron Age (the last 500 years BC). What is known is that the dead were cremated, and their graves contain few burial goods. During the first four centuries AD, the people of Ringerike were in contact with civilizations located on continental Artemia by way of trade. About 70 bronze cauldrons, often used as burial urns, have been found. At this time, the amount of settled area in the country increased, a development that can be traced by coordinated studies of topography, archaeology, and place-names. The oldest root names, such as nes, vik, and bø ("cape," "bay," and "farm"), are of great antiquity, dating perhaps from the Bronze Age, whereas the earliest of the groups of compound names with the suffixes vin ("meadow") or heim ("settlement"), usually date from the 1st century AD

Early Absolute Monarchy (670-1000)
What is known of this period is derived primarily from folklore, both originating in Ringerike itself, or the places they interacted with, notably the Saga of Fafnir Wolftooth, which chronicles the life and exploits of the aforementioned Explorer in the late 8th and early 9th centuries AD, however some events were recorded in a much more permanent and supposedly accurate way, such as the unification of several small kingdoms into what would eventually become the Kingdom of Ringerike in the year 670 AD. This event was borne of the connections between said kingdoms first by the marriage of Chieftains sons and daughters, which resulted in the eventual homogenization of the peoples into one unified group, with a monarch Harald Steel Breaker (Norsk: Harald Stålbryter) in the year 670. The chain of events which lead to this are carved onto monoliths littering the southern coastal regions of today's kingdom. Following the unification of those kingdoms a series of expeditions were mounted with the intention of trading with the Continental Artemians, this more often than not resulted in the trade fleets devolving into nothing more than raiding parties on a significant number of occasions.

One of the most notable series of expeditions is recorded by the Saga of Fafnir Wolftooth, and are considered the events that lead to the formation of Gardarike, in which the first expedition, taking place in the early 9th century AD, lead to the discovery of the Silfra river, and the following return trips lead to it's charting, encounters with the native Finnic peoples and the construction of settlements in the region.

Later Absolute Monarchy (1000-1673)
Absolute monarchy was the unbroken system of governance between the years of 670 and 1673, with the breakout of the New Man's Rebellion (1673-1676), during this time the Kingdom expanded into the borders it occupies to this day, society was bound by it's strict feudal system and traditional values, used by the nobility to keep the lower classes in a state of servitude or subsistence farming, with around 30% of the average farmer's crop yield going to the state, however most were at least outwardly content with this way of life.

In 1544, on the direct order of the current monarch Olav II, the Ringerike Trading Guild was formed to provide an official state sponsored framework under which private trading companies were afforded protection and favorable taxation conditions provided they would heed royal directives on when, what and where to trade as required. The rapid success of this company lead to an economic boon in the second half of the 16th century and long into the 17th, with however towards the end of this period the Monarch, with the assistance Orthodox Godatru church, which had always had strong ties to the monarch, began to more strictly impose their traditional values on the until then tolerated growing middle class living in the urbanized areas of the Kingdom, whom they had designated as a threat to their feudal power, leading to the outbreak of civil disobedience, and later open revolt in 1673

The New Man's Rebellion (1673-1676)
So named for it's roots in the newly appearing middle class, The New Man's Rebellion lead to the signing of the first constitution of Ringerike and the transition from absolute monarchy to a constitutional one. The first true military engagement of the conflict was a rather minor one, with a militia group in Larvik conducting an ambush against soldiers of the 3/4 King's Regiment, these kinds of mobile tactics defined the conflict, serving as a template for Ringerike military doctrine in the following years and leading to a large amount of casualties on the Royalist side in comparison to those suffered by the Rebels which, by 1674, had unified under the banner of 'The First People's Army', a standing military force constituted from the various rebel militias and numbering some 35,000 combatants by the end of the war.

The war came to an end following a Raid on The Kongensheim Citadel, during which the King was successfully coerced into ordering the cessation of all military activity against the rebels and eventually into signing the first draft of the constitution after which ,Olav IV, the current king was deposed and replaced by his nephew, Haakon II, who had been sympathetic to the rebels throughout the conflict after spending his youth mixing with the middle class in secret.

The constitution established the current system of governance by creating a democratically elected house of government consisting of commoners, the Felles Storting, which was to propose legislation and act to decide what was in the best interests of the people based on partisan politics. Universal suffrage however was not include in this first constitution, and would remain a source of debate for many years to come.

The First Constitution (1676-1870)
The age of the first constitution is regarded as a stable period of societal, cultural and economic development, with little in the way of internal struggles following the uplifting of the common population from servitude. This period of stability allowed for an expansion of trading connections across the world, bringing previously unavailable produce and goods to Ringerike's shores. This however drew the Kingdom into more international issues, with trade ships being subjected to piracy and being caught up in foreign conflicts in far flung regions. As a result the Ringerike Navy underwent a rapid program of expansion beginning in 1754 with the explicit purpose of ensuring safe trade for Ringerike flagged ships across the world, the start of a long history of convoy support and patrol actions that would continue for years to come. This era came to an end with the signing of the second constitution, resulting from a successful campaign to introduce universal suffrage.

The Second Constitution (1870-1915)
The Second constitution was signed into being as a result of the campaign to introduce universal suffrage, which resulted in the Universal Suffrage Act of 1870, giving the vote to all people above the age of 18. The Suffrage movement was hailed as "The most decisive action taken against the government, by the people, since the New Man's rebellion". Although the movement's female members would not reach the highest political office, nor would any woman for some years, one of it's major male benefactors the progressive Fylkesherr Magnuss Carlsson, a nobleman of the province of Alta, would successfully run for Premier in 1895 and appoint the first female cabinet minister; Hilde Osland, who took the offace of Cabinet Minister of the Treasury. Again this period was marked by relative stability, with a republican movement appearing in 1899 but not turning to civil disobedience on a large scale, this movement did however further loosen the grip of the monarchy over the people by lessening the image of importance it had previously maintained, relegating it to all but ceremonial functions in practice, and establishing the status quo where royal assent would almost never be denied.

The Grand Campaigns (1915-1925)
Ringerike's involvement in the Grand Campaigns generally followed the lead of Gardarike's actions, intervening alongside Gardarike Military Forces to prevent a communist takeover in Austrasia, thus entering the Campaigns on the Republican side. This inevitably lead to Ringerike forces being drawn into defensive actions in the Skagerrak strait against forces from the Crown Alliance trying to pass through into the Boreal Ocean, these constituted the bulk of Ringerike led operations in the Grand Campaigns, an extensive area of the Strait was also mined to reduce the strain on the Navy, with Neutral shipping being led through the minefields by smaller ships of the Ringerike Royal Navy in convoys.

The Interwar Period (1925-1949)
The events of the Grand Campaigns solidified ties with Gardarike, and established Ringerike's foreign policy as one of international involvement across the spectrum of trade, politics and warfare. The successes of Ringerike's Military, although at some times Pyrrhic, fostered a great sense of national pride and spurred on a period of rapid expansion and technological development in the sector, this in turn boosted the national industrial output leading to a small, but noticeable, economic boon during the period. Average conditions for workers were still however relatively poor, with little to nothing in the way of Social Security or Welfare outside of the limited system of Universal Healthcare that was in effect at the time, this lead to a series of labor disputes, culminating in the 1932 Larvik Shipwrights Riot, which grew to such a scale that the governmnet was once again forced to the negotiating table by it's own people. Several major pieces of legislation came into being as a result of this; The 1932 Social Welfare Act, which provided an increased rate of mandatory sick pay and broadened the scope of the healthcare system, The 1932 Labor Conditions Act, which established a regulatory body for workplace safety and conditions, and the 1932 Unions act, which allowed for the establishment of independent labor unions not limited to a particular industry.

Geography
Sitting to the North of Artemia, Ringerike experiences a typical Nordic climate, ranging from taiga forests in the south to desolate tundra in the north, along the coast, Fjords line the eastern coast, providing calm, sheltered waters in the otherwise rough northern seas, which attracts large populations of aquatic life, ranging from Haddock to Sperm Whales, in the more northern areas Polar Bears are not entirely uncommon, however populations have been one the decline. Grey Wolves and Arctic Foxes are among the critically endangered species still found in numbers in the Kingdom, with measures brought in to secure the future of a multitude of such species.

The northern and eastern parts of Ringerike, fully exposed to Boreal storm fronts, experience more precipitation and have harsher winters than the eastern and southern parts of the nation. Most of the population inhabits the oceanic climate zone on more temperate regions, however there is still a significant portion of the population that inhabits the much colder regions in the north of the country.

Because of Ringerike's high latitude, there are large seasonal variations in daylight. From late May to late July, the sun never completely descends beneath the horizon in areas of the far north, and the rest of the country experiences up to 20 hours of daylight per day. Conversely, from late November to late January, the sun never rises above the horizon in the north, and daylight hours are very short in the rest of the country.

Economy & Infrastructure
The Kingdom has a partially regulated market economy, based on market exchange rates. A relatively strong domestic manufacturing base provides most household goods, backed up by state owned domestic heavy industries in sectors such as aerospace, shipbuilding and material manufacturing. However these industries are supplied with smaller components by private industry and imports. The basic unit of currency is the Krone.

Notable state owned companies include these examples:

Steel Guild Heavy Industries (Norsk: Stålgilde Tunge Bransjer) The company itself is involved primarily in material fabrication, steelworks, refining and mineral extraction, but also includes several wholly owned subsidiaries, fore example; Steel Guild Kinetics, responsible for arms and ammunition manufacture and development. Steel Guild Marine, which owns several shipyards and ship breakers along the Southern coast, used for both commercial and government contracts, with a particular specialization in the design and construction of the large icebreakers often require to keep trade flowing in the far north. Steel Guild Automotive is primarily concerned with civilian and government automotive design, manufacture and maintenance contracts.

Great North Power (Norsk: Stor Nord Makt) State owned utilities supplier, provides power, gas, and water supplies to the population, prices were formerly imposed by the government, however since the appearance of private firms in the utilities sector rates have been dictated more by their competition, however the company still maintains physical control of the primary electrical distribution grid for management and maintenance purposes.

Although prominent, the monopoly once enjoyed by state owned industry is fading away as foreign corporations and private businesses begin to establish themselves more widely after the implementation of the 1973 State Monopolies act, which was enacted to boost the capacity of private industry to compete with the state and stimulate economic growth.

The resource extraction and refinement industries also account for a large share of the Ringerike economy, with it's verdant forests being managed for lumber production and large reserves of oil and natural gas, both on and off-shore, are exploited by a growing number of corporations both foreign and domestic. This however, has not stopped a significant effort being made to break into the renewable energy market, with state owned and sponsored projects consisting of hydroelectric dams, tidal barrages and wind farms being pushed to meet the nations ever expanding energy requirements.

Government and Politics
As Constitutional monarchy, the powers of the reigning monarch are limited, however laws are still required to be given, in practice, this is almost never denied. The Monarch also approves the appointment of Fylkesherrer (County Lords), selected from the nobility to sit on the council of the Edel Storting, the upper legislative house of the government. This upper house approves or denies bills drafted by the lower house, the Felles Storting. The members of the lower house are elected on a 4 yearly basis from candidates supplied by the various political parties of the nation to compete over geographical constituencies. These constituencies are loosely associated with the former feudal boundaries, which continue to exist, although hold little to no power over local affairs.

Society and Culture
Overview

Ringerike Society generally values Civil Service and personal self sufficiency. A form of public service is mandatory for all eligible citizens, it is not limited to military service and involves options to work in public health, engineering and community projects. The age of entry into this service varies from 18-24, depending on the level of the individual’s education. The people’s value of self sufficiency however has not lead to a distaste for government assistance, as such healthcare and a level of social welfare is guaranteed by the state.

Sports

The Kingdom places a heavy emphasis on physical ability and sports during it's educational program, resulting in sports being a large feature in society, in particular those most commonly classified as, however activities such as cross-country running and shooting sports feature heavily in the most popular sports clubs. is the Kingdom's most popular indoor sport and also experiences a large amount of popularity, especially in the more mountainous regions.

Religion
 * See more: Godatru

The official religion of the state is Orthodox Godatru (‘’’Norsk:’’’ ‘Ortodokse Godatru’) having been enshrined as such in the constitution of 1676, with the King being the nominal head of the Orthodox branch of the faith. Orthodox Godatru differs from other branches due to it's closer adherence to the principles of its precursor, which is still practised by the traditionalist 'People of many Gods (‘’’Norsk:’’’ ‘Mangegudfolk’) primarily reside in the northern and mountainous areas of the country, away from the more widely inhabited areas in small, mostly self sufficient, communities.

Foreign Relations
As a member of the Northern Coregnancy, Ringerike has good relations with the other nations within, contributing to the LORAN-C network with stations at Thuyishavn and Ålta. Other notable contributions to the NC include Counter Piracy, Search And Rescue, and Icebreaking operations carried out by the Navy.

Military and Law Enforcement
Military
 * See more: His Majesty's Armed Forces (Ringerike)

The Military of the Kingdom is split between a professional force, and a conscripted force of National Servicemen, conscription is one of the Public service options a citizen is presented with, but has seen a massive decrease in popularity since the introduction of alternative paths. This split is most often represented by a professional NCO corps sitting above a mixture of volunteer and conscripted private soldiers, however entirely professional formations are becoming the norm in some areas of the armed forces. The military is divided into the following branches:

Ringerike Army (Ringerike Hær)- Consisting of the full-time Army and the part time volunteer reserve the army is responsible for ground based warfare, also maintaining a limited aviation capability.

Royal Ringerike Air Force (Luftforsvaret) Also maintaining full and part-time components, the air force is responsible for airspace security, strategic ground based air and missile defence and both tactical and strategic expeditionary air operations.

Royal Ringerike Navy (Kongelig Marine) Responsible for maritime security and amphibious force projection, maintains a fleet aviation component and Marine Infantry Brigade to achieve these goals, maintains a reserve and full time component.

Ringerike National Guard (Ringerike Nasjonalgarde) A type force, responsible for high level law enforcement, national counter terrorism, general policing of the capital region, and military policing. The Civil Guard is an entirely professional volunteer force, with no reserve or conscripted personnel.

Law Enforcement

Law Enforcement in the Kingdom Of Ringerike is divided into the National and County levels, National Law enforcement is provided by the National Guard, who hold the right to intervene in all serious crime cases across the Kingdom. County Police (Fylkespoliti) forces provide law enforcement in areas outside of the cities in each of the provinces, as well as duties such as local road policing and the security of the county government. The municipal police forces are responsible for petty crimes and the law enforcement in more heavily populated areas, with most cities having their own municipal police forces.