ATTIRE

Norwegians wear high quality fancy clothes, partly because they can afford it, but also because it’s expected.  Americans would call it “keeping up with the Jones’,” but Norwegians just call it appropriate.  Socialism impacts even their closet.

American’s highest level of formal dress is tuxedos and evening gowns.  Norwegians have their bunads (pronounced “boo-nod”) that trump even that. 

Bunads are a traditional costume worn for the most formal occasions like weddings, funerals, baptisms, and confirmations, and on specific holidays like Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and their National Constitution Day - 17^th of May.  It would also be appropriate attire if one were invited to have coffee with the Queen.

Every region in Norway has their own special bunad design, dating back centuries.  It’s almost like a clan distinction, as everyone can tell right away where someone comes from, just by looking at a woman’s bunad. 

Nearly all 15-year-old girls get a bunad as a confirmation gift.  In our region of Norway, bunads are hand made of wool and embroidered with a colorful hand-stitched flower pattern.  It takes nearly a year to make it and usually the mother or grandmother takes on that labor of love. The blouse is hand made of linen, is also embroidered and is adorned with silver broaches. The bunads are meant to last a lifetime, and are often handed down, which is good because they cost over seven thousand dollars by the time the outfit is complete.   They also grow with the woman, as many parts are expandable.  It’s a smart idea since I’ve rarely seen an older woman with the same body size she had at age 15.

The Confirmation boys, since they haven’t finished growing, just get a new suit, which ironically, in Norwegian, is called a “dress.”  A tie is actually called “slips,” so it’s funny to hear men talk about wearing dresses and slips.  I guess there are men in America that wear those too, but not in my social circle.  Later in life, a Norwegian man may buy a bunad, but they are not as common because they are expensive, and not designed to expand. 

Short of the bunad, Norwegians dress in semi-formal attire even when invited over to a friend’s for coffee.  I don’t even own nice enough clothes to really feel like I fit in in Norway, but they all understand that I’m an American. 

When I hosted a party once, I made sure everyone understood this was an “American party,” as I’m not terribly comfortable with the Norwegian dress code. One of the cousin’s responded to my invitation with, “So that means we just show up in our underwear, right?” Which shows just how lax Norwegians think we American are.

SAFETY

One of the things I dearly love about Norway is how safe it is for my son to wander.  It’s like when I was a kid growing up in the 60s, gone from home all day and my mother only saw me at dinnertime.  America has changed so much that my son would otherwise never get to experience that kind of freedom, except for the months we spend in Norway every year. 

I freaked out the first time I saw a little girl, no more than three years old, walking alone down a sidewalk. She was probably just heading over to a friend’s house, and it was all I could do to not stop and help her find her way, but I knew better.  Kids in Norway learn at a young age how to be self-reliant and very responsible in this world, and they have no worries about being kidnapped.  It just doesn’t happen there.

When I first visited Norway by myself in the early 80s, the travel books said it was the safest country in Europe for women to hitchhike alone.  With the influx of foreigners in the last twenty years, unfortunately, that may not be completely true today, but for the most part, Norway is still a very safe place.  The tragedy there last summer certainly took away their innocence, but the only dangers I’ve ever encountered are the non-human kind.

I’ve driven on many one-lane roads cut into the sides of mountains with no guardrails. One tiny distraction or slight turn of the wheel, and the car would go careening over the edge.  Yet, I’ve never read in the newspaper about people dying on those roads.

I’ve stood on top of many lookout peaks with a sheer drop-off below that doesn’t even have so much as a rope to mark the danger zone.  Norwegians love to walk right up to the edge and take daring photos.  Sometimes I can’t even watch.  All I think about is that at any minute the rock could crack or they could lose their balance and that’s the end of them.  But Norwegians have a confidence I’ve never noticed in Americans – one that says they know they won’t fall, trip or slip.  They know it’s dangerous but they know how to handle it.  I think Americans have lost that inner strength.  We, for the most part, have become dependent on others to protect us.  Someone else is responsible for our safety.  Someone else should pay for our scraped knee or accidental death.  The lawsuits that now run rampant in America have done much to take away our own sense of personal responsibility.

Every year people die in Norway doing risky things like base-jumping or rock climbing.  Norwegians have an attitude that if someone is stupid enough to do such things, they deserve to die.  They only want the smart ones to survive.

Customer Service

I don’t think there’s a phrase in Norwegian that means “customer service” because I don’t think they understand the concept.  It was such a shock for me when I lived there, having been pampered by the American way of life.

In the past, whenever I shopped in Norway, no employees ever even asked if I needed help.  Lately, however, at least that’s begun to change.  But even now, no cashier ever calls for back-up, even if the line is ridiculously long.

I usually just let go of the “Customer is King” mentality when in Norway, but a few times I was pushed over the edge and wished I could’ve demanded my natural born American rights of what is decent and fair in business.

I bought a modem when we lived there so we could have Internet access in our home.  I paid cash for it, took it home and waited, sadly, for a month before the installer came to hook it all up.

A few weeks after my modem and laptop were up and running, I received the exact same modem in the mail.  Soon thereafter I got my first bill and saw I was billed for it, along with the equivalent of twenty dollars for shipping. 

I took the extra modem back and told them someone made a mistake, and why would they ship me another modem after it was obvious I was already hooked up with one, anyway?  The guy just shrugged his shoulders and reimbursed my account the cost of the modem, but wouldn’t reimburse me the cost of shipping.  I told him it wasn’t my fault someone messed up and he said, “Yes, but they did have to pay to ship it to you, so they need to be reimbursed for that.”  I argued with him using my American logic that it wasn’t right I pay for something that wasn’t my fault, but there was no changing his mind.   

Another time I had a similar experience with an after-school program my son attended.  They made a billing mistake, so I pointed it out to them.  They agreed they had made a mistake and they sent me a new bill, but by the time I got it, it was overdue, so it came with a ten-dollar late fee.  They wouldn’t budge on that one either, no matter how much I pointed out how unfair it was that I had to pay a late fee because I was waiting for a corrected bill from them. “It’s a computer,” the woman argued, “ I can’t tell the computer what’s fair, so you just have to pay it.” 

Norwegian logic always wins, as I’ve come to know, being married to one for more than two decades now.

Misunderstandings

A little ditty often quoted when heading out the door for a walk in Norway is “Ut på tur, aldri sur.” It rhymes in Norwegian but translates as “Out on a trip, never sour,” meaning one is always in a good mood when they are going for a walk.  Rain or shine, Norwegians love to go for walks and their culture caters to it with very wide sidewalks weaving in and out of every community.

The phrase “ut på tur” is used when describing a casual walk around the block or a strenuous hike up into the mountains.

One very rainy morning in Norway, I got a text message from my friend, Kristin, asking if I was free to go “på tur.”  I wasn’t sure if she meant a nice walk in the rain around the neighborhood, or if she really wanted to go climb the nearest mountain in the pouring rain, but I was up for whatever adventure she was offering, so I responded accordingly.

Everyone has full raingear in Norway – rain pants, boots and jacket with a hood.  The weather is never a deal breaker, so I purchased all the necessary clothing soon after we moved there.  I was ready for this moment.

Kristin walks faster than I do so I knew I’d be getting a work out trying to keep up with her, even if the walk was just around the block.  I put on some shorts and a short sleeved shirt under my rain gear, just so I wouldn’t overheat. 

When I arrived at Kristin’s house, I could clearly see she wasn’t dressed to go for a hike in the rain, and neither were the other women there.  In fact, Kristin’s coffee table was set, candles were lit, and fancy foods were on display.  I had to ask for clarification, as I was sure the text she sent me meant we were going for a walk.  It was then that I learned Norwegians use the exact same phrase to also invite someone over to their house for a visit. 

And there I sat around the coffee table, with the other guests dressed in their finest attire, and me in my wrinkled, baggy Hawaiian t-shirt and shorts, exposing my bare unshaven legs.  I couldn’t have been more embarrassed.  I’m no slave to fashion and when in America, could care less what I look like, but in Norway, I try to cater a little more to their fairly formal cultural norms and expectations.

Fortunately, everyone was very forgiving of my misunderstanding the invitation, and for the way I looked.  We all had a good laugh so I can still say that when one is “ut på tur, aldri sur.”

My Engagement

The day I met my future mother-in-law, I complimented her on an unusual necklace she was wearing.  She told me its story.  The two gold circles were her and her husband’s wedding rings.  After he died, she placed them one inside the other and put a cross in the center to signify their Christ-centered life.  She attached it to a chain and never took it off.

She went on to tell me that in Norway, when couples get engaged, they both put rings on their fingers and don’t exchange them during the wedding ceremony. Everyone in Norway uses plain gold bands and they wear them on their right hand.  The rings also get inscribed on the inside with the date of their engagement, and the name of the person they are engaged to, with “din” before it.  “Din” is the Norwegian word for “yours.”

I instantly fell in love with that tradition.  It always bothered me that in America a woman gets “marked” before she’s married, wearing an engagement ring, but there’s nothing to tell the world the man is also taken.  I decided then and there I was going to get engaged in Norway. I knew Kory would never pop the question, so for his birthday, I bought him tickets to Norway to “visit his family.”  I planned to propose to him on New Year’s Eve, exactly 51 years after his mother took a highly unorthodox move by asking his father to marry her.  Kory had no idea what I was up to.

Once we were in Norway, I secretly enlisted the help of a cousin to buy the rings.  Initially, I’d planned to fly to the same town where Kory’s parents were engaged, but the tickets were too expensive so I settled on the idea of proposing in his childhood hometown as we walked the streets of his old neighborhood.  Little did I know our engagement would become something similar to the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”  The minute the cousins heard I was going to propose, they took complete control of the entire event, insisting they all be there to witness it.

In the end, and against my will, I ended up arriving at the house in a fire truck, with lights flashing and sirens blaring.  Even though I didn’t know the local customs, I was sure this was highly unusual. Kory was most perplexed, especially when dozens of relatives descended on the scene with cameras in hand.  Someone had alerted the media, so a reporter and photographer were also there.  It couldn’t have been more different than what I had planned, but having the whole family gathered did put a little extra pressure on him to finally say, “Yes.”