How diffrent are we? Month one and a few Norwegian stereotypes

Greetiiiiings! I have survived my first month in Norway! I managed to get used-ish to the daylight madness and don’t feel bad when I go to bed ‘’during the day’’ sometimes. I remembered some impossible names and am able to distinguish a word or two in Norwegian. I got to know the custom about the meal times here, approximate time schedule and so on. The hardest part is to unpack and I confess my sin, I still haven’t done it. It might be the lack of space, (the room is ridiculously small for the two people who intend to stay there for a year), motivation or simply the fact that I am hardly ever in my room except for sleeping since there is always something going on.

Midnight in Oslo

A warm welcome to the office

                                                Generalisation

I will expose some stereotypes today, but let me point out something about the generalizations first. I often hear typical features about nations by the people who travel and/or hardly visit the country, but they are trying hard to find the cultural differences and often random facts start counting as some kind of universal truth for them. Sure, you might encounter something pleasant or unpleasant, but projecting it on the whole nation is ridiculous, so I keep avoiding claiming something unless I am very positive about it.
Furthermore, working with tourists is, well…your job. You are paid to be kind and radiant and the job is normally taken by the people who enjoy doing that. The same goes for workers in the international environment – the profile of these kind of people is mostly not the realistic projection of the country. But, they are there to help you integrate and explore, of course.
Patricia and I, we are lucky to uncover the coutry from the perspective of many different points of view – natives, foreigners and tourism workers.

In addition, this is not my first time visiting Norway, I was volunteering there for two weeks a few years ago already so many things are already obvious to me while they may be surprising for total beginners.

So, let’s start with some short, but confirmed facts that I found interesting; since my definition of it may differ from yours, I tried to make it reader-friendly anyway :)

Norway is the country with impressive surface per person and length. The distance between north and south is approximately the same as Oslo – Rome. Due to that, the population is very scattered, even the capital has the population of cca 500 000.
The language they speak is Norwegian, Germanic language that is a lot easier to read than to listen to in case you are familiar with English and/or German. Norwegian is divided to two ‘’main dialects’’, called Bokmal and Nynorsk, east and west side of the country. What blows my mind is the all-around knowledge of English language, regardless of age of the person! They do not mind speaking it and even if they are being modest about their language skills, they are normally very good! That is not very common in the places I’ve lived in or traveled.

Until the 60s, Norway was not a wealthy country, but apparently, the economy, organization and oil do the miracles. The pulled themselves together to the extent of being one of the richest countries in the world even. So ‘’everything is so expensive here’’ is quite an unimaginable concept until you arrive there and price of more than 3 euros for a can of beer in the store hits your wallet. I am not exaggerating, it is expensive here. The most expensive free time activities here are alcohol consumption and smoking (13 eur per pack), so it is a completely normal thing to drive across the border to Sweden for greater shopping.
Speaking of alcohol, it is not easy to get one here. Anything stronger than beer has to be purchased in some specialized stores which close down in the late afternoon and are inaccessible to people younger than 20. You may imagine the blossoming of the black market and joy of overdosing since it’s so sweet once you have it.

One of the main thins that caught my attention is the market – it is really specialized and limited. If you want Milka or Nutella, be ready to take an extra mile to the international store or Sweden, in the supermarket you can get only Freja, the Norwegian chocolate, and perfaps a few more.
It happened to me that I forgot my anti-dandruff shampoo back in Austria, so I went to get it. It is weird enough to go shopping for cosmetics, make up and hygiene accessories in H&M, but looks like that’s how it works. There is a choice of some basic brands, a few shades of hair dyes etc., so my choice was ‘’Head&Shoulders’’ or ‘’Go somewhere else’’.  I chose the latter and went to the Body Shop.

The selection of hair dyes

When it comes to personality, I can personally relate to Norwegians probably better than my colleagues from the warmer and ‘’overly friendly’’ countries. They mind their own business, although to the greater extent. I am not the most social person ever, but it still feels good when you don’t get surprised looks when you greet someone on the street.
They are very proud of their country, love exposing their national symbols and flags, especially on their national day. I have hardly seen overweight people, they kinda look like from a cartoon – tall, slim to normal figure, fair and blonde. They are REALLY into sports, regardless of the weather and temperature. I guess they don’t have much choice though – at the moment we are enjoying the nice summer days (22-24 degrees) with quite some cloudiness and wind, periods of everyday rain…we don’t see the stars really as there is practically never properly dark. After the sunrise around 23, the nice orange line on the horizon can be observed until 1 am, and again around 3 as the sun starts rising.

Last, but not least – the strong spirit of gender equality is present here. It is not unusual to see the woman as the public transport driver or carpenter, as well as it is not taken for granted that the guy will hold the door for a woman or pay for the first date.

The food was skipped on purpuse so you don't get too tired. Stay tuned!

Credit for some images: Patricia Benesiu