Official language: Norwegian
Population: 4,805,437
Currency: Norwegian Krone (NOK)

Current Exchange Rate
1 EUR = 8.3390 NOK
1 GBP = 9.1965 NOK
1 USD = 5.5740 NOK

Casinos in Norway
There are no casinos in Norway. The legal situation concerning gambling in Norway is very unusual. Many forms of gambling are permitted, including sports and horse betting along with several kinds of lottery. Live casino games, like poker and other similar games, are not allowed.

There used to be over 20,000 slot machines in Norway in place of casinos. The vast majority of these were owned by the Red Cross and other charity organizations. The gambling machines were huge profit centers for those companies. But in mid 2007 the Norwegian government ordered all slot machines be removed. The state declared a monopoly on slots and insists they be the only entity allowed to profit from them. There are still slot machines in Norway, but the numbers are much smaller now.

Online Casinos in Norway
Online gambling in Norway is legal, but there are no Norwegian online casinos. Only three licenses have been granted to companies for online gaming, and all are sports betting organizations. Because there are no casinos in Norway, it seems likely that unless the laws change dramatically, there will never be any proper Norwegian website to play online casino games.

The Norwegian government used to turn its head when its citizens played at foreign internet casinos, but this has changed recently. In December of 2008 the government officially banned gambling at foreign online casinos. The ban won't be fully implemented until late 2009, but will eventually make only state-owned internet gambling sites legal. The Norwegian government will have problems enforcing the ban since they have no jurisdiction in the countries where foreign online casino sites are hosted. The EU opposes the ban, but since Norway is not a full EU state, they can do nothing to stop it.