About the Norwegian Forest Cats

Although the breed was acknowledged recently (ca.1976), it's supposed to have existed for centuries in the Scandinavian regions. The norwegian mythology shows a type of cat so big that not even Thor himself could lift from the ground. The leyend also mentions two huge felines pulling the carriage of the viking goddess of love, Freya.

In the XVI century, certain danish monk refers to them as the norvegian lynxes, while in the XIX century Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe, collecting data from the norwegian mythology, bumped into the reference to Troll Cats, big and furry, that later would be named Cats from the Forest in Literature.

Nevertheless, they were commonly known amongst the norwegian folk as skaukatts, "cats of the forests", and regarded as domestic semilong haired lynx-like that coexisted happily with humans in their farms.

The precise moment of this breed's appearance in Norway is not known for a fact, although the popular speculation is they might have been the result of the coexistence of Turkish Angora cats brought by either the Vikings or the Crusaders and the local wildcats, which along with the decades of living in a cold, woody, environment, apt for hunting, would have provided them with the look we now appreciate, the spectacular coat that protects them from the extreme cold, their strong, muscular legs fit to jump on trees and the excelent hunting skills.

Here you have 2 images to help discern the differences in the standards of the three Forest cat breeds, the Maine Coon the Siberian and the Norwegian Forest Cats.