Grades

Surprisingly, Norway has some of the lowest academic scores in Europe.  They’re certainly not dumb or uneducated, it’s just they value things other than what’s covered on standardized tests.  We found out this interesting tidbit the day we had our first conference with Kaleb’s teacher.  She explained that in Norway, the emphasis in education is learning to work together, “And they don’t test for that,” she said rather smugly. 

Each desk in my son’s school was built for two.  Students switched off working in each other’s books.  Whether the answer was right or not, wasn’t the point.  The point was, that they learned to work together to find a solution.  The only thing they are judged on is how well they get along with others.

Many jobs in Norway are like government jobs in America – they are hard to lose.  So they figure when someone gets a job, they may have it their entire life.  If there is one person in the workplace that isn’t a team player, it affects everyone else, so they emphasize cooperation and tolerance.  

From 8^th grade on up, students get graded on a scale from 1-6.  Everyone expects grades in the 3-4 range, which is perfectly acceptable.  It’s not at all like America where we take pride in rising to the top and getting straight As. It’s quite the opposite in Norway - the goal of every student is to be average.

A high school student who is really bright and has worked hard in one subject may end up with a 5, which would be cause for a family celebration, since they are so rarely achieved.  Even more rare, is getting a 6.  No one ever expects anyone to achieve that level.  Why it’s even there, I do not know.  If someone is very gifted in an area, or it’s a subject directly related to their future line of work, it’s possible to achieve a 6 in one class with much effort. People just shake their head when they hear of it, like someone just told them they climbed Mt. Everest in a single day.  It’s considered an impossible feat that no one dare undertake.

Kory’s cousins’ daughter, Hege, is not only smart, but she loves to study.  Every time we see her, she has a textbook in her hand. She lives for academic challenges.  At the end of 9^th grade, she pulled off straight 6’s.  It had never been done in the history of her school.  All the teachers and students raved.  A huge article was written about her in the newspaper, “The Queen of Sixes” it said.  People were in awe and wonder.  The weird thing was, though, that behind her back, they criticized her because in order to get grades like that, it was assumed her social life was suffering.  And in Norway, that’s just not acceptable.

Sundays

Sundays in Norway are somewhat like snow days in the Northwest.  Life just stops.  Everything is very quiet.  Nothing is open, except for a gas station here or there.  Hardly anyone works, except preachers, emergency personnel and the poor folks down at the gas station.  Options are limited, which I discovered, is a good thing.  There is a kind of freedom in having nothing to do.  Families are together.  Hikes happen.  Walks in the rain take place.  Neighbors chat quietly with other neighbors.  It’s a recognized day of rest and Lord help those who disturb it.

It’s against the law in Norway to mow the lawn on Sunday, or do any kind of outdoor activity that would otherwise disturb a neighbor.  It’s also against the law to do laundry or hang it out on the line on Sundays.  I’m glad the “Sunday police” didn’t catch me before I learned about that law. 

Norwegians buy fresh baked bread each and every day, therefore, the few gas stations that are open, also have a bakery behind the counter.  Norwegian’s won’t eat day old bread.  I’ve never been fond of gas station mini-marts before, but it’s hard not to love them when they always smell like fresh baked bread. 

The only downside to Sundays is, if one is having guests over for dinner that night, one must be absolutely certain they have everything they could possibly need to make dinner, since there is no mad dash to the grocery store for that last forgotten item. Besides bread, the gas-station mini-marts pretty much just sell ice cream and candy.  I tried to plan my meals around ingredients I was sure were also stocked in my neighbor’s pantry, just in case. 

We attended church every Sunday while we were living in Norway, which is more than most Norwegians do.  The churches all have cafés in them so people can linger, have lunch, coffee and cake, and just chat with their friends.  There’s rarely a rush on Sundays to get anywhere, unless it’s to have dinner at someone’s home.

I swore, when we moved back home to America, that I would protect the sanctity of Sundays.  I loved how simple they were in Norway, as they truly became a day of rest.  Once we moved back to America, however, it was just so much easier to stop by Costco after church, since we were already in town, fill the car with gas, and run a few errands.  We’ve even been known to do laundry and mow the grass on Sunday, and our neighbors have never once complained.  Is that real freedom?

Mountains

Along the central coast of Norway, mountains rise straight up out of the fjords below.  Every mountain peak has its own name and reputation, and they all have trails to the top.  Every person I met in Norway, living within view of any peak, knows the exact number of hours and minutes it took them to get there.  It’s as if they were born to conquer the mountains.

At every peak there is a notebook and pen encased in a weather proof box, used as a subtle bragging tool.  Columns in the book include date, name, hometown, number of times to that spot, and hours and minutes it took them that day.  Everyone knows who holds the record.

Norwegians all look at their watch the minute they head up a trail.  They are forever wanting to beat their best time.  It’s insane.  The hike up the mountain isn’t about enjoying the journey, smelling the fresh air or stopping to pick wild blueberries, it’s simply to make it to the top as fast as humanly possible.  

 I was embarrassed once when I was 41 and we climbed a mountain with Kory’s 75 year old aunt.  She left me in the dust.  As I was sucking in air as if my life depended on it, she was singing hymns as she passed me.

Once when we were hiking up a nearby mountain, we ran into a 78 year old guy known as the “Incurable Mountain Man.”  He’s been written up in the newspaper many times as he hikes up that mountain nearly everyday – no matter what the weather.  He said the snow will be three feet deep and he’ll be the first one to the top – clearing the trail for others.  When he was 77 he climbed it 340 times, sometimes four times a day.  That same year he’d also hiked to the top of every peak we could see around us, which was way too many to count. 

A friend of ours once pointed to a peak that is 6,000 feet straight up and it took him six hours to ascend it.  His wife’s cousin was able to run it in just one hour and 28 minutes and was disappointed he did not break the record, which stands at one hour and nine minutes.  The man that set that record died a few years ago while he was out running up yet another mountain when it was just too cold to be out doing such a thing.  He himself had a cold and he collapsed and died on the mountain.  He’s considered a local folk hero to this day.   Strange priorities.

Patience

One thing I noticed while living in Norway, is that Norwegians are very patient people.  For example, no one ever honks their horn, for any reason.  One time I saw a car in the ferry line and even though the cars were loading, the driver was digging for something in her purse. All the cars behind her could have easily gone around, but no one did. They must have waited for over two minutes. No one beeped their horn and no one cut in front of her. They just patiently waited, and when she was done, they all drove on.

Perhaps Norwegian’s have perfected their patience skills while waiting for the government to respond to their many needs.  One of our neighbors injured his shoulder on the job.  Because of their socialized medical system, the backlog for surgery is enormous.  He had been on disability pay for eight months when I met him, still waiting for his surgery date.  He didn’t care, even though he was bored.  Because of Norway’s generous disability program, he was getting paid the same whether he worked or not, so he just waited. 

Our neighborhood bus stop was covered with horrible graffiti that included many swear words in English and Norwegian, and a picture of an ugly red devil painted right in the middle of it.  It was disgusting.  We talked to neighbors about it and they all said they had been waiting years for the local government to repaint it.  We got so tired of looking at it from our living room windows, that one day Kory just took a gallon of white paint and painted it himself.  Why wait, he wondered, just solve the problem.  The neighbors were shocked and elated.

After he painted it white, it seemed all too easy to have it destroyed again by graffiti, so he bought some red and blue paint, and just before Norway’s big Constitution Day (17^th of May), he painted a large Norwegian flag on both the inside and outside.  A neighbor was so proud of it she took a picture and sent it into the newspaper.  It created quite a stir.  Some people felt it was no different than graffiti and he should have to pay the standard seven hundred dollar fine, while others thought it was a wonderful act of public service.  One person wrote in to the editor that it was indeed an act of graffiti, and as his punishment, he should paint fifty more, just like it. 

Since Norway is so incredibly proud of their flag, the walls of that bus stop became holier than a church and even two years later, no one has touched it.  No patience required.

Naming Conventions

My father-in-law was born Halvor Gunderson Strand in 1912.  He died before I ever met his son, Kory Slaatthaug.  If Halvor’s parents hadn’t moved to the Slaatthaug farm when he was two years old, my husband’s last name would now be Strand.  In those days, every time someone moved, their “last name” changed, because in Norway, since the beginning of time, a person’s “last name” was really their address.  (What Norwegians called their “last name” is what we would call their “middle name.”)

Because first names get passed down from generation to generation, there ends up being a lot of people with the same name living in one area.  Halvor was known as “Halvor, the son of Gunder,” but more than likely, there would be more than one guy (most likely related to him) with that exact name in the neighborhood, so he was called “Halvor, son of Gunder who lives by the beach.” (“Strand” is the Norwegian word for beach.) 

Most every “address name” is a geographic location: beach, hill, woods, gravel pit, valley, bay, etc.  My husband’s last name, Slaatthaug, means “harvested hill.” The geographic name indicates where the farm is actually situated, and when people moved from farm to farm, they obviously had to change their address.  In 1923 however, the Norwegian government realized it was too difficult to keep track of people, based on this naming convention/tradition, so they made a law that said everyone had to keep whatever their name was at that time, and even if they moved, they shouldn’t change it, so that tradition died.

First names are still recycled over and over again in Norway because traditionally, the first born son takes the name of his father’s father’s.  The second born son often has the name of his mother’s father.  Girls are frequently named after their grandmothers.  A very old tradition was to name the newest family member after someone that just died.  Since infant mortality was high, a woman might birth four babies through the years, all with the same first name, but only one made it to adulthood.  Strangely enough, I’ve even seen family trees where the father’s name was Ole and all four of his living sons had the same name.  (Perhaps George Foreman is Norwegian?)

Up until twenty years ago, all baby names had to be submitted to the government for approval before a birth certificate was issued.  It was thought that having an unusual first name might be detrimental to the child, so conformity and standardization was encouraged.  But with traditional first names like Dagfinn, Roar, Oddrun, Bent, Birger, Frode, and Snorre, ya gotta wonder what they were thinking.

Understanding Kory

I had several major “clicks” pertaining to my husband, the year we lived in Norway.  I was not previously aware that many of my irritations with him were just his cultural norm.  Now I know.  

The first click came the day I learned about pronouns in my Norwegian class.  There are different pronouns to say “hers” or “his” of course, but Norwegians use extra pronouns for those same words, depending on whether the “hers” or “his” is the object or subject in a sentence.   To say “her” as the object, it’s “hennes,” but as the subject, it’s “si.”  Often, when Kory is retelling a story, and there are more than two people of the same gender involved, he completely loses me and I have no idea who did what.  Now I know why - the English language is limited in their use of pronouns.  Norwegians make it much easier to track who the “he” or “she” is in the conversation.  When Kory talks in English, he just converts everything to “he” or “she” and while it’s perfectly clear in his mind, I’m always having to ask him, “Who are you talking about?”   It’s just so irritating.

When we were first married, I made Kory some yummy lemon chicken and when I asked him how he liked it, all he could say was, “I like my chicken to taste like chicken.”  After having been around Norwegian food for a year, I now realize they boil everything and put spice on nothing.  Another click.

But the biggest “click” about Kory came the day The Good Teacher Inga told us that Norwegians don’t really tell anyone they love them.  Maybe once, before getting married, they might utter the word “elske” (love), but for the most part, it’s a very rarely used word.  Even parents talking to their children don’t say it.   

They have a saying, “Jeg er glad i deg,” which literally translates as “I am happy with you.”  That’s it.  That’s all you get.  That’s their toned-down version of “I love you.”  That’s what spouses say to one another and that’s what parents tell their children.  There is no love being spread around in Norway, that’s for sure, unless they are talking about chocolate, then someone might be brave enough to utter the “elske” word. 

Years ago when I complained about his lack of verbal affection toward me, Kory just gave me the old line, “I told you I loved you when we got married.  If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”  It’s been twenty years.  If he ever does tell me he loves me again, I sure hope he doesn’t use any pronouns.  

Vehicles

Cars are an expensive item to own in Norway.  The government doesn’t deem them a necessity, so they are heavily taxed.  A new car comes with 100% sales tax, plus a “deposit” of a thousand dollars. When the car finally makes it to the junk yard, the deposit is refunded.  The government wants to be sure cars don’t litter up their otherwise incredibly beautiful landscape.  Many fairly good older cars end up in the junk yard because when things start breaking down, people would rather get the refund back than pay for repairs.  Repairs are incredibly expensive and every other year an inspection of the vehicle, is required (which costs about a grand) to be sure there is nothing wrong with it.  If there is something wrong, it must be fixed or the license plates are removed.  Norway doesn’t allow junky cars on their roads.

On-going car expenses aren’t cheap either. Gas was fifteen dollars a gallon when we first moved to Norway, the tabs on our van were over five hundred dollars, we paid over two hundred dollars just for an oil change, and the minimal insurance cost nearly a thousand dollars a year.  The government sets the price of the tabs based on how many cubic meters are inside the passenger area, so many cars in Norway have the back seats removed and a metal screen installed behind the front seats so they won’t get taxed on the luggage area in the back.  Weird.

The license plate on a car stays with the vehicle its whole life.  When we bought our used van, we had to go down to the licensing bureau with proof of insurance and a driver’s license, before we could buy back the plates.  The insurance agency and vehicle licensing bureau are tight - so nothing gets past those guys. 

When we left Norway to come back to America, we just thought we’d let the tabs expire and the insurance run out, but thankfully the cousins warned us to turn in the license plates, because if the plates are on the vehicle, we would have to pay for both the tabs and insurance even if the vehicle wasn’t driven.

Many people in Norway don’t own cars because it’s so easy to get around without one, but just taking the bus fifteen minutes down the road and back cost me over fourteen dollars, so that option’s not so cheap, either. 

I know Americans have a long standing love affair with the automobile, and I must say I love the freedom it provides, but while living in Norway, I’ll admit, my love began to dwindle.