What Else Is Weird About Norway
Where a hug is worth a thousand bruises
I will never be Norwegian. My aunts, my uncle, my cousins, my grandparents, my dad, they’re Norwegian. I have attended preschool in Norway as both a student and a teacher, worked in Norway, paid my Norwegian taxes, traveled the world on a Norwegian passport, been called into the Norwegian military and fulfilled my civil service, but I’ll never be Norwegian. I came within a kiss and a vow of having Norwegian children; they would’ve been Norwegian. But me…
Driving to an away game with my sixth-division soccer teammates Sjur and Kim, Sjur made a joke about foreigners. Kim, who was adopted in infancy from his impoverished birthplace somewhere in Asia and has no sense of humor, bristled. “Hey!” He shouted from the backseat, “You’ve got a foreigner in the car!”
“Actually,” Sjur looked sideways at me as if Kim were the biggest fool in all the world, “I’ve got two.”
Welcome to Norway, where the men are named Kim, the women are named Torunn, and citizens are named foreigners. Want to know what else is weird about Norway?
EVEN NORWEGIANS DON’T LIKE NORWEGIAN
• Want to know how to say hello in Norwegian? It’s “hey.” Want to know how to say good-bye? It’s “hey.” Want to show the world you’re feeling kooky and fun? Instead of “hey” say “hey hey.”
• If you’ve read the original What’s Weird About Norway, you know that Norwegians don’t have a word for sorry. They do, however, have “sorry.” The English word “sorry,” spoken with a heavy Norwegian accent. Why? Because…
• Norwegians love English. They’ve adopted so many English words into their vocabulary that there is a governmental committee assigned to creating Norwegian words to replace English ones in an attempt to keep Norway Norwegian. But no one uses the Norwegian replacements because they’re dumb, made-up words.
• Every opportunity Norwegians get to insert some English into the conversation, they do it. Anything in English can be inserted into any conversation at any time. Not because it’s clearer or the word for it is lacking in Norwegian, but because they can and they like it. They don’t, however, always get the grammar right. Like this example I overheard in a pub: “My friend is dating total loser right now.”
I once had a fervent debate with a group of “internationals” (as foreigners who live in Norway call themselves) over whether or not the news reporter was quoting a foreigner in the report we’d just heard. For them, it was the only explanation as to why the reporter would say an entire sentence in English. They couldn’t understand that it’s just the way Norwegians talk. “But what if the viewer doesn’t understand English?” they argued. “You’re in Norway now,” I replied. “Everyone speaks English.”
• My favorite English word in the Norwegian language is “face,” spoken in an absurd, Norwegian-accented, American, long-”A” dialect. It’s how they refer to Facebook. Imagine that you’re in an airport and two Norwegians happen to sit down behind you. If you’re not Norwegian, their conversation will sound something like this: “Norwegian norwegian norwegian FACE norwegian norwegian norwegian.”
IF YOU’VE MET ONE NORWEGIAN,
YOU’VE MET ALL 16 OF ‘EM
• Metal is the rock music of Norway. Just as American men all seem to love rock bands like Nirvana, The Black Keys and Green Day, men in Norway are assumed to love metal bands like… I have no idea what any popular Norwegian metal bands are called, because I am sane. But they’re probably named The Devil’s Revenge, Satan in Hell, and Blood Pain Metal Cool or something like that.
• You cannot name your child anything you want. Every name must be approved. Get too creative and your child’s name will be rejected by the government and you’ll be fined or even put in jail. That’s right. You can be put in jail for giving your child a non-Norwegian name. That’s how serious they are about names.
• And many names have been banned in Norway. Including Bjørn, which is Norwegian for bear. But “bear” is such an immensely popular name that people protested and got it removed from the banned-name list. Bear. The animal. The one that shits in the woods.
• There are no middle names, just second first names. If your name’s Sigrund Jannike Andreasen, then your friends call you Sigrund Jannike. In case you were wondering, that’s a girl’s name. I should also note that this is a fictional name. Sure, Sigrund and Jannike are both common Norwegian women’s names, but there are only certain combinations that are popular, and people rarely stray from them. It all causes a lot of confusion, because…
• Any Norwegian could pass for the cousin of any other Norwegian. I’d say there are about 16 names and 16 faces in Norway. If you need to figure out who anyone is, just start from those 16, then mix and match.
A NORWEGIAN SAFETY GUIDE:
OPEN THE WINDOWS AND UNPLUG THE TV
• Fresh air is essential to Norwegians’ existence. Sitting in a room with all the windows closed is unthinkable. It doesn’t matter what the weather. It can be minus 20 degrees, windy, snowing, blizzarding, or raining rusty nails and knives, and Norwegians must still open two windows to create a draft, or they may suffer stuffy-air symptoms like whining, complaining, and being mildly uncomfortable.
• The greatest threat to a Norwegians’ health and safety is fire, which is why most companies run a mandatory fire-safety course for their employees several times a year. It’s easy to see why it’s necessary when you look at these staggering statistics: 0.00002% of Norwegians are either injured or killed by fires every year! Fire hazards are everywhere you turn, and the greatest threat of all is the highly dangerous wall outlet. Are you using your TV? Right now? Unplug it. Computer? Unplug it. Microwave? Water kettle? Stove? Are you mad? Unplug that crap. What is that? Is that a cell-phone charger? How long has it been sitting there? Two minutes?!!?!! OH DEAR GOD!! A FIERY DEATH IS UPON US!!!!! If Norwegians had their way, you would never plug in your cell-phone charger. Not even to charge your cell phone.
• Never hug a Norwegian. First, he won’t be expecting it, and you’ll get an awkward one-armed hug, in which he contorts his body so that the only part that makes any contact with you is his shoulder. Second, if he is expecting it, or worse, initiates it, he’ll jam the point of his shoulder into your chest like a dagger, wrap an arm around your neck and squeeze with an unbreakable grip, slam his cheekbone into your face, and kiss the air. You’ll walk away bruised and wondering why your good friend hates you so much.
“NICE WEATHER WE’RE HAVING,”
HE SAID EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE
• A Norwegian’s favorite topic of conversation is the weather. “Weather’s terrible today.” “Weather’s been awful lately.” “I think it’s rained every day this week.” “Finally, it’s sunny!” “Ugh. Overcast again. At least we had some sun yesterday. That was so great.” Every day. All day. With everyone you meet. I can’t talk about the weather anymore. I’m getting anxious just talking about talking about the weather.
• Speaking of the weather, Norwegians drop everything on a sunny day. On a warm, sunny day, all previous plans are assumed cancelled, and everyone goes outside to lie in the grass. Any patch of grass will do. No park or medium is too small. Businesspeople walk out of their offices, take off their suits, and find a human-sized piece of soil to sunbathe on. My first summer working in an office, my boss stopped by five hours before my workday was done. He had left his sunglasses at work. He saw me sitting at my desk and said, “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m working… What do you mean?”
“Look out the window. It’s beautiful out there!”
“I… I have work to do.”
“It’s a sunny day. You should be outside.”
“Uh.. but.. I’m supposed to be here.”
“Psh. Suit yourself. But I’d go sit by the water if I were you,” and he left to go sit by the water.
• The drinking culture is… special. Pre-partying isn’t something you do with your buds if you have some time to kill; it’s a mandatory ritual preceding every night out on the town. It begins at a friend’s house or a friend of a friend’s. You arrive with your group of friends and others with theirs. Then you all sit in a circle talking, getting to know one another, drinking only the beer that you brought and no one else’s, and having a good time. Until midnight, when you go out with your group of friends and others go out with theirs. You may all be going to the same place, but you will leave as you came: separately. The next morning, you return to your friend’s friend’s apartment and retrieve the beers you brought but didn’t drink. The host is expecting this and has made sure not to distribute your beers to anyone else in your absence.
• Every spring, graduating high school seniors have three weeks without classes to give them time to study for their final exams. It’s always the three weeks leading into Norway’s biggest holiday, Constitutional Day, on the 17th of May. So for three straight weeks every spring, graduating seniors are drunk. They dress in red overalls folded at the waist, purchase cheap or broken red vans, and complete absurd tasks to earn knots on their tassel. Why red? Probably because it’s the national color, though I don’t actually know. It certainly couldn’t be for some innocuous reason like, 100 years ago that’s what the cool kids wore.
In recent decades, vocational schools have joined in on the fun and adopted different colors representing their different trades. But mostly, Norway becomes a sea of drunken, red teenagers having sex in parks. Yet somehow, Norway consistently scores below expectations on the global education scale. No one knows why.
• There is a word they speak while breathing in instead of out. The first few times you have an extended conversation with a Norwegian, you’ll be sure they have some sort of unconscious tic where they make a sound like some aquatic mammal that had its larynx cut. It’s not a tic. They’re agreeing with you. The word is “yes,” and it’s spoken while taking in a sharp breath. It’s only used in certain contexts. The best I can equate it to in the English language is “yup.” It’s usually used to agree with a statement, as opposed to answering a question. But it’s entirely unnecessary. A Norwegian could go his entire life without using the in-breath yes and never be misunderstood. You can choose to say yes like a human, or you can make a sound like a crab. It’s up to you.
• This is how taxes are done in Norway: one fine morning, you receive a letter in the mail from the government. It says, “Hi. It’s time to do your taxes. We’ve done them for you. Did we mess up? Send a correction to here. Want more money back? Tell us how much here. Happy? Text ‘Thanks, Best Government Ever!’ to here.” Then you drink your cognac on the porch of your cabin in the mountains and go cross-country skiing in a T-shirt and shorts into the sunset, at noon.
