Norway has 5.5 million people. Through one state fund, it now owns a share of nearly every listed company on Earth.
The Government Pension Fund Global, known at home as the Oil Fund, held assets above $2 trillion by early 2026. It spans roughly 7,200 companies and stands as the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. Divide the total among Norway’s population, and each citizen holds a notional claim of about $385,000. No one can withdraw that sum. It sits inside a shared national asset, not a personal account.
Oil turned up off Norway’s coast in 1969, part of one of the largest offshore finds known at the time in the North Sea. Lawmakers passed legislation to build a fund in 1990, and the first deposit went in during 1996.
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From the start, managers chose to invest only outside Norway. Money kept abroad cannot push up the value of the krone or squeeze the parts of the economy unrelated to oil, a pattern economists label Dutch disease.
