No, to secure neutrality you have to be able to balance the interests of foreign governments so that they have no reason to invade or you need to have sufficient military force to deter invasion.

On the first point there was no compromise that both the British and Germans would find acceptable. Both countries were strategically interested in Norway which aside from its own mineral exports transmitted over three million tonnes of Swedish iron ore during the winter months when the Swedish Baltic port of Lulea. Britain was also interested in preventing the use of Norway’s waters to German shipping. Both sides made plans to achieve these goals the Germans began drawing up the Operation Weserubung on the 14th of December 1939 and British had a dual operation first operation Wilfred to mine Norway’s territorial waters and upon a German response plan R4 would be put into effect to support the Norwegian government.

Neither side wanted to be seen as the aggressor, especially the British who had the war aim of convincing the USA to join the war. However things escalated with the Altmark incident where a German auxiliary vessel carrying British POWs captured by the Graf Spee traveled not just through Norwegian waters but though a restricted zone around the port of Bergen. Upon inspection the Germans denied the presence of British prisoners, who created a racket down below and refused a comprehensive search by the Norwegian navy despite this being a condition for continued passage through the restricted zone.

In his report to the government RearAdmiral Carsten Tank-Nielsen said that:

The vessel has refused additional visitation and passage through the defended area is therefore denied Prisoners of war are likely to be onboard

The government overruled Nielsen’s order allowing Altmark passage hoping to speed her on her way and avoid a crisis, information of this leaked to the British embassy in Olso and a task force was assembled to capture the ship. The British caught up to the Altmark who was escorted by Norwegian torpedo boats. Eventually the British boarded the Altmark who had fled into the ice covered Jossingfjord and released the prisoners.

Key things to note, the Norwegians made incredible exceptions for Altmark, attempting to protect her allowing her passage through restricted areas and going back on previous ultimatums that she must be searched.

Despite this the incident only served to the convince the Germans that the British would violate Norwegian neutrality and that an invasion was necessary.

The Norwegian Government was in a catch 22 situation. They could not satisfy both the British and the Germans.

This brings me on to deterrence, especially compared with Sweden Norway had a much less modern armed forces. Sweden had a modern fighter aircraft, and a squadron of three Interwar era Sverige class cruisers/costal defence ships. Norway by comparison had no operational monoplanes though had recently purchased six P-36s from America. Norway’s navy focused on harbour defence relying upon costal battery’s and numerous small craft such as torpedo boats, minelayers and patrol boats, seven destroys and two ageing costal defence ships dating from the turn of the century these ships were half the displacement of the Sverige class and they were sank in Narvik in the opening day of the War by German destroyers.

This was insufficient to deter an attack , although with the outbreak of hostility’s efforts were made to improve readiness but these came too late.