Submitted by: Submitted by rambo
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Date Submitted: 03/20/2013 04:31 AM
06-07
A BRIEF
GuIdE to
LIVING IN
NoRwAy.
www.StudyINNoRwAy.No
ASPIRE. INSPIRE.
coNtENtS
Society
Lifestyle
Culture
Dining
Climate
Foreign students about Norway
p.4
p.14
p.20
p.28
p.34
p.38
ππ
INtRoductIoN.
Why Norway?
This booklet is for anyone who is thinking about living in Norway. A crash course in Norway,
if you like. It’s designed to give you a brief guide to Norwegian society and culture; lifestyle,
behaviour and opinions. We hope that this brochure will make it easier to make the decision,
easier to arrive in Norway and easier to fit in, since you’ll know a few things about what
to expect.
Which is a good thing, because Norway can be confusing at first - and Norwegians are a very
odd people - they are walking paradoxes! Norwegians consume more coffee per capita than
any other country on the planet, and read more papers than any other people in the world.
So on the one hand we’re a nation of wide-awake, extremely well informed people. On the
other hand, some Norwegians enjoy living in places where the sun doesn’t shine for months
at a time, and consider fish marinated in caustic soda or dried and blowtorched sheep’s head
a prime delicacy. This all points to something essential about Norway: a strange mixture of
down-to-earthness, curiosity, tradition and innovation in the people here, all combined with a
healthy dose of surrealism and madness. This, if nothing else, means that being a Norwegian
means you have to develop a keen sense of irony.
You’ll be here as part of your studies, so we’re sure you’ll be happy to hear that Norway has one
of the highest standards of general education in the world. We’re wide-awake, well informed
and well educated. Our egalitarian and freely available education system has led to a remarkable level of education, especially when it comes to women: over 60 percent of all higher
education students in Norway are women.
It has been often said that the average Norwegian is shy...