Greece vs Norway

Norway is 2.5 times larger than Greece — 323,802 against 131,957 km². Greece is 1.9 times more populous than Norway — 10,413,962 against 5,610,870 people.

Side by side

Population density

Greece is 4.6 times more densely populated than Norway — 79 against 17 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Euro and the Norwegian krone.

Greece

Somewhere between 1,200 and 6,000 islands depending on how you count a rock, of which about 227 are inhabited. Greece has roughly 13,700 km of coastline, the longest in the Mediterranean and eleventh longest in the world. No part of the mainland is more than about 137 km from the sea, and Mount Olympus reaches 2,917 m.

Norway

The mainland coastline is about 2,500 km end to end, but roughly 25,000 km following the fjords, and over 100,000 km counting the islands — one of the longest coastlines of any country. Sognefjord runs 205 km inland and is 1,308 m deep. Norway generates almost all its electricity from hydropower.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.