Competitiveness...

The day we got our first big test back in my Norwegian class, I was reminded of just how competitive I am. I did OK, but I didn’t get the top score. I struggled with putting the stupid verb in the second position for every sentence. I so want to say, “Can you do that?” rather than, “Can do you that?” It goes against every fiber in my being to make a sentence that sounds so ridiculous, but that’s how Norwegians talk so I’m the one that sounds like a fool when I speak with an English sentence structure.




When someone is talking to me in Norwegian (even now), I feel much like the dinosaur that gets its tail stepped on and it takes a complete minute for that information to travel to its brain before it can say, “OUCH.” Once someone says something, they need to stop and give me a minute to process all the words to see if I can figure out what they just said. But no, they just keep on talking and I’m lost in a blur of syllables that go up and down with such a sing-songy rhythmic pattern it could put a person to sleep. No one said it would be easy.



It killed me though because back in my school days, I was used to being the best student in class, but in Norway, not so much. There were young women in our class, fresh out of high school, so their brains were still in the soaking-it-up mode and they kicked my butt in terms of learning the language.



The student that did the best was from South America, and she’s sweet as pie but my nature is to not like her because she was better than me. My only consolation was that she has a horrible lisp, so I told myself no matter how much she knows this language, no one will ever be able to understand her speaking it. At least people understood me when I talked, even if my sentence structure was wrong.



The only good news that day was that I got a better score on the test than My Pal Vestina, and she was a most excellent student. So apparently the class was not so much about me learning or not learning the language, as much as it was about me being competitive and petty. Go figure. I still have a lot to learn.

Baby Money

In class one day we learned all the special words one would want to know if they are pregnant (gravid) in Norway. The reason they are so important is because they mean money. It’s hard to believe, but they actually pay women to have babies in Norway, and they keep paying for those babies until they are 16 years old – no matter how much money a person makes. The government pays the parents several hundred dollars every month until the baby is three years old, when the amount drops to about $200 a month until they are 16 years old. All “baby/child” money is tax free and is given for every child living in Norway, since the government acknowledges that it takes money to raise a child.




Norway is, I believe, the most progressive country in the world when it comes to maternity leave. All working women get one year’s maternity leave and 80% of their pay for that first year – and their jobs remain secure. If they chose to not go back to work after that first year, they can take another year off and keep their job, but they get no pay during the second year. The father of the baby also gets a 100% paid maternity leave for eight weeks sometime during the baby’s first year of life. (It’s been proposed to increase the father’s time off to five months, but I’m not sure if that has gone into effect yet.)



If a woman was not working prior to giving birth, the government makes a nice one-time deposit into her bank account to help with the expenses of raising the baby – to the tune of 90,000 kroner (more than $15,000 – tax free.) And because of their socialized medical system, all medical expenses associated with having that baby are paid for by the government.



We went around the room that day and everyone in class told about the birthing and maternity leave policies in their home country. Everyone (except me) was from a country where the medical expenses are free or miniscule and several countries had many months of paid maternity leave.



I was embarrassed to talk about the policies in America and how we have none of the above and that I had the privilege of paying over eight thousand dollars to the hospital just to give birth. The gasps were audible. But I choose to believe you get what you pay for, and I now have a boy worth every cent (and then some).

Secrets

The Good Teacher Inga spent a great deal of time being a cheerleader to half of our Norwegian class who were getting homesick and tired of how hard it was to learn Norwegian. Inga validated their feelings by telling us all that it’s very hard to move to another country even if you know the language because she lived six years in Ireland and was fluent in English but still had a horrible time adjusting. She was so good for us. The Good Teacher always cheered us on and told us all we are doing great – even the ones that couldn’t speak a word of Norwegian.




One day Inga mixed things up a bit and had us change our usual conversation partners. She put me with the little old Russian lady, Valentina, that didn’t speak much of anything. What a hoot that woman was. By looking at her, she looked old enough to be my mother, but she’s only five years my elder. (Life must have been hard in Russia.) She told me that day (through using her Russian/Norwegian dictionary – and me translating what she said using my Norwegian/English dictionary), that she used to live way up north on the Norwegian/Russian border.



We were supposed to talk about the weather in our home countries that day, so she said (also using a lot of hand motions and drawing pictures on paper for clarification), that in the winter, that far north, they would get up and turn on the radio and hear, “Today will be five minutes long,” and the next day, “Today will be ten minutes long.” That’s how long the sun would show itself on the horizon. And during those winter months, the whole town would go outside and wait to see that little crack of light (no matter what the weather) and they’d whoop and holler and have a great old time because the sun hadn’t left them for good.



I asked Valentina what she did for a living up there and she also told me that for seven years she was a General in the Russian army (I didn’t see that one coming). Then she made hand motions like little boys do when they shoot pretend guns and she made all the sound effects that go with it. I got the sense she’s actually shot people. She then looked up the word that meant “secret” and I’m not sure if she meant I was supposed to keep that bit of news a secret, or if she worked for the secret service agency within the army. I guess her secret is out now.

Work Laws

The work days in Norway seem so much shorter than in America, but that’s probably because most everyone lives within just a few minutes of where they work and there is no real commute time factored in. Norway intentionally spreads the industries out in every little nook and cranny of the country. One little village will have a hot dog factory, another is the home of the “Grandiosa,” Norway’s favorite frozen pizza. If all the jobs were located in the big cities, then everyone would live in the city, and that’s just not the Norwegian way of life.




Norwegians work seven and a half hours a day with most shifts starting around eight and ending by four, including the half hour lunch break. An hour for lunch would be unnecessary in Norway because no one goes out to eat (it’s too expensive). There are rush “moments” (not “hours”) in the town where we lived in Norway.



The government in Norway demands that all working people take three weeks off every summer, and it all has to be in one chunk – they can’t parcel it out. They figure it takes that long to unwind from their jobs and be refreshed again for another year. They also get two other weeks off during the year whenever they want, and they get the week between Christmas and New Years and several Holy Days free. Norwegians have a lot of time off from work. It’s amazing they get anything done.



The law in Norway also says that no one is allowed to work more than ten hours a week of overtime – ever. And in one calendar year, it is not allowed to work more than 200 hours of total overtime. Imagine that. (Microsoft would have big problems operating in Norway.) But after the financial crisis that happened a while ago – they may need to re-think that law. Norway had over 33 million US dollars (168 million Norwegian kroner) of their citizen’s retirement fund invested in Washington Mutual stock (it made big headlines in Norway when that bank fell). Perhaps if some of Norway’s top financial advisors had put in a few extra hours at the office that year – they might have seen that one coming.

Common Expressions

In my Norwegian class one day we learned some common expressions and sayings. After all the work they had us go through to learn the different tenses of verbs, that day we found out that if the verb is obvious, it can just be skipped altogether.




Why in the world would it be okay to leave out a key element in a sentence? The only thing that made sense was something my husband, Kory, told me one time. As a kid, when he sat down at the dinner table, he was required to be silent so his parents could talk. He thought he wasn’t allowed to speak because there must be only so many words that could come out of his mouth in a lifetime, and that he wasn’t supposed to use them all up as a child…. Such is the logic of his young mind, but I have no idea behind the logic in the rule of leaving out the verb.



It’s very weird to hear someone say, “I can Norwegian,” (“Jeg kan norske.”) It’s allowed to leave out the verb “speak” because it’s obvious what goes there (more obvious to some than others, I suppose). So it’s possible to hear people say things like, “I will the store” or “I must to class.” Why not just say “GO” right in there with the sentence, as it’s not a very big word, even in Norwegian? But then, Norwegians are known to be quite the conservers. They don’t even waste a breath, as they often talk while sucking in air.



It’s common when talking to someone, that they make a sound like they just choked on something. They suck in a breath at the same time they say, “Ja” (“yes”). It’s as if what they are agreeing to couldn’t even wait until their next breath was taken and their comment has to come out immediately. I don’t get it, but then I don’t get a lot of things Norwegian - like the expression, “Kan du slå på tråden?” Word for word that is translated as, “Can you hit me with a thread?” or “Can you punch me with a string?” – it could go either way as the words used mean both things. That’s the literal translation, but the meaning is something that could never be guessed: “Can you give me a call?”



I’m sure there are weird English expressions we have as well, but since I’m so used to them they don’t exactly come to mind. “Can you hit me with a thread?” Where do they come up with this stuff?

Newspapers

Reading the newspaper in Norway is right up there with talking about the weather or complaining about taxes. I read a travel book of Norway while on the ferry one day– it was translated to English and it highlighted every town along the coast. Each city’s description started off like this: Aalesund, population: 40,000; newspaper subscriptions: 38,000. Several cities had nearly as many newspaper subscribers as they have residents.




I thought about that for a while and wondered how that could be since children wouldn’t be subscribers... but then I figured it out. In our city alone there were no less than four major newspapers, two local ones and two national ones. Everyone I know reads two or three of them a day. It’s the national pass-time.



The newspapers in Norway aren’t anything at ALL like the American ones where the motto is “If it bleeds, it leads.” In fact, Norwegian newspapers are mostly human interest stories (somewhat like the LaConner Weekly News!) and the bad news is buried somewhere in the middle and not at all highlighted. Norwegians don’t like to hear bad news.



There are very few advertisements in Norwegian papers (the bulk of the pages have no ads whatsoever) and they are all in full color – every page. Of course, each paper costs about four dollars a day, but people still buy them and read nearly every word. They report on even the slightest of details.



Norway doesn’t have the censorship in newspapers like they do in America. They don’t omit a word, and swear words are often in the headlines. (They actually HAVE freedom of speech in Norway as no one can lose a job or get sued for something they say.) They also have at least one naked body picture a week in the paper, as nudity in Norway means nothing. It’s just the human body and they don’t have any modesty when it comes to that (that was a little hard to get used to).



On the whole, newspapers are pretty interesting as they highlight a lot of local people and what they are doing in their jobs or with their spare time. I’m sure everyone that lives in Norway has been written up in the newspaper more than once in their lifetime. I guess it’s the way Norwegians feel connected to one another, without actually having to talk to each other and dare risk sharing their feelings.

Taxes

Every job in Norway pays a livable wage. I could have gotten a job flipping burgers for twenty eight dollars an hour. It’s not the money that attracts people to jobs, it’s the job itself. People end up doing what they really want to do for a living – not doing something just for money. (That concept is NOT American.) Recently Norway reduced their maximum tax bracket from 92% to 50% so now there is starting to be more diversity in standard of living. It used to be everyone was taxed in such a way that they all took home about the same amount.




Most people working full time make around fifty grand a year and nearly half of that goes to taxes. One of the national pastimes is complaining about taxes, but Norwegians all live upper-middle class lives compared to Americans. Many have cabins, all go on nice vacations, most drive new cars, and everyone has a decent house. Go figure. But Norwegians actually get something for the taxes they pay. They have no medical insurance premiums and minimal medical expenses ($150 per year). They have no property taxes. They don’t have to save for retirement or pay for their children’s education as those are provided for by the government, and they don’t have to worry about becoming disabled because Norway pays well for disabilities. When I think about where the bulk of our money goes in America, I worry about the rising costs of medical expenses and insurance, Kaleb’s college fund, and property taxes. No such worries plague Norwegians.



Income tax isn’t the only source of revenue in Norway, however. Sales tax is 26% on everything, including food, but it’s built into the price, so there is no math to do before going to the cash register. New cars have a 100% sales tax and most things brought in from outside Norway have a 300% import tax (which is most everything and why it’s so expensive to live there.)



I read in a Norwegian newspaper that the leading cause of death is cardiovascular related - a whopping 39% of deaths are from that and another 25% are from cancer. That’s 64% of people in Norway dying from either heart attacks or cancer, and while that seems incredibly high – the average age of death in Norway is 78 - so the bulk of those deaths are from old people. And if the only sure things in life are death and taxes, it’s guaranteed that if the taxes in Norway kill you, they will also pay for your funeral.