Everyone knows about Vikings and Edvard Munch and Henrik Ibsen. Or, at least we hope you do! But we’ve been digging deep, and finding all sorts of cool stuff we didn’t know about our latest home-for-now. Here are some lesser-known details and facts about Norway and the Norwegians.
Dairy Products
The Norwegians love dairy products, especially yogurt-y things like skyr and cheese. We knew that. But we didn’t know that the cheese slicer (ostehøvel, for those playing along at home) was invented by a Norwegian, Thor Bjørklund. We wondered why we had two (two!) in the utensil drawer of our Oslo apartment. Now we know. So useful for the hard cheeses popular here!
Metal Music
We knew about a-ha (yep; they’re still touring!) but we didn’t know about the robust heavy metal music scene throughout Scandinavia, especially black metal, death metal, power metal, and Viking metal. About half the time we are out in the street, day or night, we hear some, though we remain sadly uninformed about the fine distinctions.
What Norwegians Look Like
When we picture the typical Norwegian male, he’s big and blonde. But he doesn’t have a two-foot long beard. Apparently, we’re out of date. We first noticed this phenomenon in Iceland, where we felt like we were in Brooklyn (microbrews and crazy numbers of tattoos there, too). So maybe it is a cross-Scandinavian trend. I mean, we get it: we’d cover ourselves in fur too if we lived here in the winter. And we’re out of date in another way: the days when all Norwegians were tall and blond are over. About 15% of Norway’s population comes from other countries, and they’ve done especially well in handling the influx of refugees. It didn’t take us long to be surprised by hearing Somali people speaking Norwegian, and then it didn’t take us long to not find that surprising at all all.
Fish
We know about Norway and fish. You might even say it’s the main reason we’re here. (You’d be wrong, but it’s not a bad guess!) But we didn’t know that according to some, the Norwegians invented sushi (and there is little doubt about the fact that they introduced salmon into the sushi palate). We’ve already said a lot about fish, so let’s move on.
Scandesign
We didn’t know it ain’t just Copenhagen and IKEA (yes we know that’s Swedish; we’re planning a trip there!): Oslo is becoming known for its innovative architecture, including the gorgeous opera house and Akerbrugge museums. We’ve been really impressed by the thoughtfulness with which public spaces are created. We’re also impressed by a lot of smaller touches, like the way our shower brilliantly manages to take up very little space in the bathroom through glass doors that fold inward.
Licorice
This seems to be a favourite flavour here, appearing in candy but also in high-end restaurant meals. And ice cream. And all kinds of weird places. Only in Scandinavia, the licorice is both sweet and salty. We would love to tell you how this combination tastes, but so far we have not been brave enough to try it. We’ll have lots more opportunities, though (which we might still not take). See this Sunny Gandara post for more info.
Fjords
Ok; we did know some stuff about fjords. But we didn’t know that there are nearly twelve hundred of them in Norway, and that they are not isolated and hard to reach. They are everywhere the coastline is, which is pretty much everywhere. Norway has the second longest coastline in the world (after Canada), over 100km in length, if you count all the islands. Oslo, in fact, is built on the Oslofjord. And we didn’t know that Thomas Cook (a British travel company) got its start in 1875 running tours to a fjord. And Voss, that fancy water in the glass bottle? It comes from the Vestland, near Bergen.
Money
We knew things were going to be expensive here, but we didn’t know it’s because Norway is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, thanks to deep-sea oil. And we didn’t know that Norway leads the world in cashless transactions. So much so that we have only once seen a kroner in the wild (being brandished by a tourist): even public toilets and buses take credit cards. And there’s a national app, Vipps, which allows you to pay directly from a Norwegian bank account. Also, surely related to this wealth, Norway ranks very highly in terms of life satisfaction, life expectancy, air quality, equality of pay, and safety. (We did know that.)
Nature
Again, we knew that Norway has beautiful scenery everywhere, but we didn’t expect to discover it right in the city. There are tons of parks, small and large, you can take public transportation from Oslo to go skiing, and there are beaches everywhere. And the Akerselva, right outside our door, has a path that leads into a heavily wooded area, going all the way to Maridalsvannet (a lake which provides most of the water for the city).
So there you have it – a summary of nine things we didn’t know about Norway, but were excited to find out!
