History of Norway company by 1985, just to go bankrupt by 1993. Unemployment reached record-high levels in the early 1990s. By 1990 Norway was Europe's largest oil producer and by 1995 it was the world's second-largest oil exporter. Membership in the European Union was rejected in a 1994 referendum, with Norway instead joining the European Economic Area and later also the Schengen Area. Large public investments in the 1990s were a new National Hospital and Oslo Airport, Gardermoen—connected to the capital with Norway's first high-speed railway, the Gardermoen Line. A number of large government companies, such as Statoil, Telenor and Kongsberg were privatized.
Capital punishment in Norway Capital punishment in Norway Capital punishment in Norway () has been constitutionally prohibited since 2014. Before that, it had been fully abolished in 1979, and earlier, from 1905 the penal code had abolished capital punishment in peacetime. In practice the last execution in peacetime was carried out on 25 February 1876, when Kristoffer Nilsen Grindalen was beheaded in Løten, but several people, mainly Norwegians and Germans, were executed after the Second World War and the years of Nazi occupation; among them Vidkun Quisling. In addition to the usual capital crimes of murder and treason, medieval Norwegian law demanded execution also