Ten Weird Things about Norway
A guide for strangers in a strange land
“So, how are you finding my weird country?” our Norwegian friend Roald asked when we met him five weeks ago in his far-northern hometown of Skøelv.
Now, Teresa (my beloved wife) and I have been on the road in Norway for two whole months. We have driven from bottom to top, east to west. At last, I believe we can answer Roald’s question:
We are finding Norway weird indeed! Uniquely, delightfully, wonderfully weird. Let me sum it up with this list of our top ten weird things about Norway:
- Norwegians dig tunnels
Tunnels through mountains, tunnels beneath cities, tunnels underwater. In some places, Norwegians build tunnels even where there are existing roads right next to them. Okay, these make sense in a mountainous, cold land, where heavy snow, avalanches and rock slides are a real problem; tunnels keep roads open that would otherwise be closed several months each year and connect islands to the mainland that would be cut off by winter storms. Norway is even building the world’s first ship tunnel right through an island so that marine traffic can avoid a treacherous strait near the port town of Ålesund.
Norway has the world’s longest tunnel at Lærdal — 24.5 km from end to end. We drove into it in our first week in the country, without realizing it. We had no idea we would be driving underground for nearly half an hour. For all we knew, we were driving into hell. To keep drivers from falling asleep, this tunnel has occasional sections illuminated with colored blue lights. We considered these the “party rooms” and sang our way through them. It helped.
Advice for tunnel driving: a. Roll up the windows to avoid exhaust fumes. b. Make sure your headlights are on. c. If you get claustrophobic thinking about all that rock or water pressing down from above, just focus on the pavement and pretend you are driving on a road at night.
2. The Arctic is pink.
Fireweed spreads, well, like wildfire, through much of northern Norway. This opportunistic weed with its bright pink flowers grows wherever it finds open ground and a bit of soil, such as the sides of roads, or land that was formerly cultivated. The north is filled with small family farms that are no longer working—like Roald’s family home. When the land goes fallow, the fireweed takes over, turning swathes of land hot pink that were once lush green. It’s pretty to look at, but kind of scary, as this invasive plant crowds out native vegetation.
3. A good cocktail is hard to find
We found it surprisingly difficult to find good cocktails in Norway. In one place, when I ordered a gin and tonic, the eyes of the young man behind the bar widened with fear. “Gin and tonic?” he said, his voice squeaking a bit. “Is that made with vodka?” I literally had to walk him step by step through how to make it. Luckily, the few good cocktail bars we found are really good. Searching them out is worth the effort.
Advice: In Norway, just one drink can put you over the permitted blood alcohol level of 0.02% for driving. Fines are severe, and at .05% the police will throw you in jail. Eat a lot of food and wait an hour after one drink before you take the wheel.
4. Norwegians hike with their babies
I love to hike. At age 64, each summit feels like a personal victory. Yet, time after time in Norway, I have huffed and puffed my way up a steep mountain trail only to find at the top families having a picnic. Kindergarten-age kids run around, nimble as little goats, and there are babies in backpacks. In one case I encountered four babies on a single mountain top. No wonder Norwegians love the outdoors. They climb mountains before they can walk.
5. Pizza and burgers are everywhere — and you can get them gluten free!
It’s bizarre how popular burgers and pizza are in Norway. Even in the tiniest remote towns, you can easily get both. It seems American-style fast food has conquered the country, but you can get varieties you won’t find stateside: Reindeer as a pizza topping? Yes, please. Mooseburger? Yum.
To my delight, as someone with celiac disease, even above the Arctic circle gluten-free options are almost always available. In contrast, in all of Paris, (the food capital of the world) I found only one restaurant with GF pizza and just a handful that have GF burger buns.
6. The lawn is on the roof
Outside cities and towns, it’s common to see houses with a turf roof. Putting a thick layer of sod with grass growing on your roof made a lot of practical sense in earlier times, from the Viking Age until the 19th Century (when tin and tile roofs came into fashion). Turf insulation keeps a house dry and warm in winter, and cool in summer. It is also easy to maintain. Basically, you just have to mow it every now and then, so trees don’t start to grow.
In recent decades, the turf roof has made a comeback. The market for vacation cottages and second homes in the countryside is booming, and turf roofs add a cosy and warm look to a rustic cabin, which is exactly what Norwegians seek — a feeling they call hygge.
7. Cash is useless
Norwegians buy everything with a credit or debit card. As a result, in Norway ATMs are as rare as phone booths. Banks don’t even have them anymore, as they do everywhere else in Europe. When I first arrived, I spent a long afternoon trying to track down an ATM in central Oslo. Eventually, I discovered one inside a deli! There are a few rip-off Euronet machines in most towns for naive tourists. These take a whopping 10% commission! But there really is no need for cash at all. I got 2,000 kroner from the Deli machine mid-June — about $200 US. Two months later, most of it is still in my back pocket.
One time my foreign credit card would not work at a parking lot ticket machine, so I asked the young woman behind me in line if she would be kind enough to purchase a ticket for me, and I could give her kroner for it. She looked at me as if I had offered to trade her a sack of flour. “I don’t use cash,” she told the old man. Luckily I did find someone in my own demographic willing to accept my gold doubloons in exchange for a ticket I could put on the windshield of my buggy.
8. Spectacular scenery abounds, but don’t expect a room with a view.
One of the strangest things we encountered time and again were hotels, homes, and cottages located in the midst of vast grandeur, but situated so poorly you couldn’t see the view. This is especially so in the rugged, mountainous Lofoten Islands, where there are hundreds of waterside cabins — most of them are facing onto a harbour with no view at all. Renters are more likely to be looking out on a lumber yard or fuel depot than the ocean.
The reverse is also true: Industrial zones are often right by the waterfront, and highway depots stacked with supplies and rubbish are located in front of spectacular mountain vistas. Maybe Norwegians are so used to being surrounded by natural beauty they don’t think about the “view” the way a visitor does?
Advice: When booking a hotel or air B&B, be sure to find a photo of the view from the window.
9. Everyone speaks English.
Here’s a fun statistic: a greater percentage of Norwegians speak English (89%) than Canadians (86%). Not only is English taught in school, but Norwegians are mostly fluent. Sure, watching American TV shows and movies helps, but so does the fact that Norwegian and English are both Germanic languages with sentence structures that have a similar word order. As a result, visitors can get by with English pretty much everywhere, which makes traveling very easy for unilingual North Americans.
Norwegians say they learn English because it is an international language, and they consider themselves international people. In our experience, they really enjoy talking with native English speakers. When they find you are from another country, they will ask with genuine curiosity, “Where are you from?” Whatever you say, odds are they have traveled to your city too, especially in the USA.
Sadly, Norwegian is not so easy for English speakers to master. We ran into a plucky English bartender in Bergen who said that even after 4 years of living in Norway, he found it very hard to learn Norwegian, mainly because of the language’s tonal inflections. He knew a lot of words but found it impossible to grasp what his Norwegian friends were saying — so they usually switched over to English when he was around.
On the other hand, I discovered basic written Norwegian was not too hard for me to understand, because many words are almost the same as English. I can read most signs and menus: “Bread” is brød; “coffee” is kaffe; “fish” is fiske. But “don’t speed” is written on road signs as dint fart. Oh well.
10. Norwegians don’t treat you like a tourist.
Teresa and I have travelled all over the world in the past 30 years. After a while, being treated like a tourist gets tiresome. People are usually professionally polite, but you get the feeling you are just one face in a long line of customers. Worse, sometimes you are treated like sheep, just part of the flock waiting to be shorn. I haven’t felt this way once in the past two months in Norway. Norwegians don’t see you as a tourist. They see you as a person. Even the people in the tourism business — servers, hotel staff, tour guides, bartenders — talk with you as if it’s you they are speaking to, not a customer.
The one situation where there is tension with tourists in Norway is with cruise ships. These ships dump a few thousand tourists off in tiny little fjord towns day after day through the summer months. It’s overwhelming. The ships not only pollute the fragile fjord waters, but they are also sometimes registered in offshore havens, avoiding taxes and environmental regulations — so claims a flier from #cruisenotwelcome I found posted in central Oslo (below)
So, it’s up to visitors to respect the people and protect the environment while enjoying spectacular, wonderful, weird Norway.
