Norway was part of the Baltica paleocontinent, bounded to the east by the Ural Mountains, south-west by the Tornquist Zone, and to the north-west and north by the North Sea and Arctic Ocean. The north of Baltica includes the Timanian area, largely today in north-east Russia, which merged with Baltica in the Timanide Orogeny at ~550 Ma.

Baltica was an independent continent from the Late Cambrian (~600 Ma) until its union with firstly Avalonia (including Southern England) in the end-Ordovician at ~443 Ma and subsequently with Laurentia (including Greenland and Scotland) in the Silurian Caledonide Orogeny (430-430 Ma) to form a sector of Laurussia. Laurussia and Gondwana amalmagated at ~320 Ma making the Pangea Supercontinent in the process. Pangea broke up in stages during the Mesozoic,
leaving Norway at the northwestern margin of Eurasia, where she remains today.

Norway was located at high southerly latitudes in Cambrian/Early Ordovician time. She rotated counter-clockwise during the Ordovician whilst moving northward, and by the Silurian, she had entered tropical latitudes as witnessed by Bahamian types reefs in Sweden. As part of Laurussia and later Pangea, Norway was drifting northwards and Oslo is today located at 60N.

Since the Late Palaeozoic, and directly linked to the break-up of Pangea, the Norwegian continental shelf experienced multi-phase rifting, culminating in the separation of Greenland and Norway and the opening of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean at ~54 Ma.   

In relatively earthquake-free areas we are commonly lulled into believing that Norway is static and only weather and the oceans are dynamic. Yet Norway, through the ages, has been far from passive. Her margins, her mountains and her very blood, petroleum, were formed in the cauldron of Plate Tectonics.