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.