Canada is far bigger and far more populous, but Norway is the richer country per person. Canada covers 9,984,670 km², about 26 times Norway's 385,207 km² (a figure that includes the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and the island of Jan Mayen), and it had about 41.8 million people in mid-2026 against Norway's 5.6 million at the start of that year. Norway's GDP per person, on the IMF's 2026 estimate, is about $105,900, compared with about $60,300 for Canada. Ottawa is Canada's capital and Oslo is Norway's. Canada has two official languages, English and French; Norway's are Norwegian, written in two standards called Bokmål and Nynorsk, and Sámi, which is co-official alongside Norwegian in a Sámi administrative area in the north. The two countries share a lot: northern latitudes, glacier-carved coasts, oil wealth and constitutional monarchies. The answers below take the usual questions one at a time, with the figures behind each.
Which Is Bigger, Canada or Norway?
Canada, by a very wide margin. It is the second-largest country in the world by total area, after Russia, though only fourth by land area alone, because so much of it is fresh water. Norway ranks 61st with Svalbard and Jan Mayen included. Without those Arctic territories, mainland Norway covers 323,808 km², which makes Canada almost 31 times its size.
Shape matters as much as area here. Mainland Norway stretches along the western and northern side of the Scandinavian Peninsula and includes the northernmost point of the European mainland; with Svalbard, the kingdom spans latitudes 57° to 81°N. Its land borders are short: 1,619 km with Sweden, 727 km with Finland and 196 km with Russia. Canada runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific with the Arctic Ocean to the north, and shares almost all of its land frontier with one neighbour, the United States, along a border of 8,891 km, the longest land border in the world. Only two of Canada's 13 provinces and territories, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have no sea coast.
Both countries also reach far beyond their mainland. Norway's area figure counts Svalbard, the Arctic archipelago roughly halfway between the mainland and the North Pole, and the volcanic island of Jan Mayen in the Norwegian Sea. Beyond those, Norway holds sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island as a dependency that is not counted as part of the kingdom, and it claims two Antarctic territories, Peter I Island and a sector of the continent called Queen Maud Land. Canada's northern reach is on land and ice rather than overseas: its Arctic Archipelago spreads across the top of North America, and since 14 June 2022 a land border of about 1.3 km has run across Tartupaluk, or Hans Island, between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, the only land border Canada has with any country other than the United States.
Which Has More People: All of Norway or Greater Toronto?
Canada has about seven times as many people. Statistics Canada estimated 41,798,407 residents in the second quarter of 2026, while Statistics Norway counted 5,633,770 on 1 January 2026. Yet Norway is the more densely settled of the two: roughly 17 people per km² on the mainland, against about 4 per km² across Canada, because most Canadians live in a narrow band near the southern border.
The cities show the difference in scale. Toronto alone had 2,794,356 people at the 2021 census, and its metropolitan area more than 7 million, which is more than the whole of Norway. Ottawa, the federal capital, had 1,017,449, making it only Canada's fourth-largest city. Oslo, by contrast, is both capital and largest city, with 724,290 people in its municipality in 2025 and about 1.1 million in its urban area.
Growth comes from different sources too. Canada has one of the highest per-capita immigration rates in the world: the 2021 census counted 8.3 million immigrants, about 23 percent of the population, and 435,421 new immigrants were admitted in 2024–2025. The same statistics show Canada's fertility rate fell to about 1.25 children per woman in 2024, a record low.
Which Is Richer: the Oil Fund or the Oil Sands?
Per person, Norway is clearly richer. The IMF's 2026 figures put its nominal GDP per person at $105,877, sixth in the world, against Canada's $60,305. In total output the order flips: Canada's economy, at about $2.5 trillion, is roughly four times the size of Norway's $599 billion. On the UN's Human Development Index for 2023, Norway scored 0.970 and ranked second in the world; Canada scored 0.939 and ranked 16th.
Both countries became rich partly through oil, but they manage it very differently. Norway's oil era began in 1969, when Phillips Petroleum discovered the Ekofisk field in the North Sea, about 320 km southwest of Stavanger. In 1990 the state set up what is now the Government Pension Fund Global, known as the Oil Fund, to invest the surplus. By July 2026 it held more than $2.2 trillion, about 1.5 percent of the value of the world's listed companies and over $390,000 per Norwegian citizen, making it the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
Canada's oil lies mostly in the ground rather than in a fund. Its reserves are the third largest in the world, behind only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, and it is the unconventional bitumen deposits of Alberta's oil sands that put it in that position. Alberta alone supplied about four-fifths of Canadian oil output in 2015, and Canada was by far the largest single source of the United States' oil imports, providing 43 percent of them that year. Where Norway's petroleum income is channelled into overseas investments owned by the state, Canada's is shared between provinces, companies and federal taxes.
Which Has Higher Mountains: Mount Logan or Galdhøpiggen?
Canada's mountains are more than twice as high. Mount Logan, in Kluane National Park and Reserve in the southwest of Yukon, less than 40 km from the Alaska border, reaches 5,959 m (measured by GPS), making it the highest mountain in Canada and the second highest in North America after Denali. It is believed to have the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth, with eleven peaks above 5,000 m on its massif.
Norway's highest summit, Galdhøpiggen, stands at 2,469 m in the Jotunheimen mountains of Lom Municipality, Innlandet county. That is modest by Canadian standards, but it is the highest point in all of Scandinavia and Northern Europe. What Norway lacks in height it makes up in relief: much of the country is high plateau and mountain carved by ice, and the Scandinavian Mountains form most of its border with Sweden. Canada's heights, by contrast, are concentrated in the Western Cordillera, one of seven physical regions that also include the Canadian Shield, the Interior Plains and the Arctic Archipelago.
Which Is Colder, Snag or Karasjok?
Canada holds the more extreme record. On 3 February 1947 the village of Snag in Yukon recorded −63.0 °C, the lowest temperature ever measured in continental North America. Norway's national record is −51.4 °C, set in Karasjok Municipality, in a river valley on the Finnmarksvidda plateau, which has the coldest winters on the Norwegian mainland.
The bigger contrast is at the coast. The North Atlantic keeps Norway's shoreline far milder than other places at the same latitude; at the lighthouse of Svinøy the coldest month averages 3.7 °C. Canada's northern shores have no such warming, and much of its Arctic is covered by ice and permafrost. Canada also has the more northerly settlement: Canadian Forces Station Alert, on Ellesmere Island at 82.5°N, lies just 817 km from the North Pole and is the northernmost settlement in the world.
Which Has the Longer Coastline and More Lakes?
Canada wins both, though Norway's figures are startling for its size. Canada's coastline totals 243,042 km, the longest of any country, and it has more than two million lakes, 563 of them larger than 100 km², more than any other nation. Three of its Arctic islands, Baffin, Victoria and Ellesmere, rank among the ten largest islands on Earth.
Norway's straight-line coastal baseline is just 2,532 km, but following every fjord gives 28,953 km of mainland coast, and counting its islands raises the estimate to 100,915 km. The country has about 400,000 lakes and 239,057 registered islands. Its best-known landform is the fjord: Sognefjorden runs 204 km inland, the longest in the world and the second deepest, and Hornindalsvatnet is the deepest lake in Europe.
Which Is the Older State: 1814 or 1867?
It depends on what you count. Norway traces its kingdom to 872 and the Battle of Hafrsfjord, but it spent centuries in unions with Denmark, from the Kalmar Union of 1397 onward, and then with Sweden. Its constitution, signed on 17 May 1814, is still in force, and full independence came when the union with Sweden was dissolved on 7 June 1905. Canada's modern state began with Confederation on 1 July 1867 and gained its independence in stages: the Balfour Declaration of 1926, the Statute of Westminster in 1931 and the patriation of its constitution on 17 April 1982.
Both are constitutional monarchies, but Norway has its own royal house in Oslo, while Canada shares its monarch with the United Kingdom and is represented in Ottawa by a governor general. Their choices about their larger neighbours also differ. Norway voted against joining the European Community in 1972 and the European Union in 1994, and is linked to the EU through the European Economic Area. Canada's economy is tied to the United States under the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. One contest they do share is winter sport, and there Norway leads everyone: 447 Winter Olympic medals, 166 of them gold, more than any other nation. For more detail on each country's terrain, read our guides to the geography of Norway and the geography of Canada, or see how Norway measures up against its closest neighbour in Sweden vs Norway.