Norway Overview

I toured parts of Norway from Tuesday, July 22nd, through Monday, July 27th. Di Yin was my excuse for the trip: she attended a graduate student summer school in Oslo that week, so I went there to explore a bit on my own and then explore with her over the weekend.

My itinerary brought me to Oslo and Bergen, Norway's two largest cities, and along rail and boat lines through Norway's inner wilderness and fjords. Norway's a sizable, long, narrow country; one week is nowhere near enough to see most of it. In fact, the distance from Oslo to the Norway's northern tip is roughly the distance from Oslo to Rome. I only visited a small part of Norway, but at least I know I visited the highlights because my route mirrored the famous Norway in a Nutshell tour. I'm not going to bother listing all sites I missed because there are so many, whether near a city that I visited (such as the fortress Fredrikstad near Oslo) or far from cities (such as Jostedalen Glacier National Park and the hikes one can take on the Nigardsbreen arm of the glacier).

The highlights of my trip were Vigeland Park, a large sculpture garden in Oslo, and the views along the fjords, especially looking down at the valleys and water from high up. Stunning! When I arrived in Norway, the train from the airport to Oslo introduced me to Norway's sloping grass fields, trees, and greenery. Later I'd see this greenery fade at higher elevations and, elsewhere, come back in more dense, forested forms. Regardless of location, the country is full of unspoiled nature. Perhaps this why water from the tap tastes good?

Neither Oslo nor Bergen feel like large cities. In both, the part of downtown tourists visit is compact; one can walk across it in ten minutes. Making them feel further less like a city, neither has tall buildings: most buildings are five or so stories. Also, both downtowns are pleasant to stroll, with sculptures or fountains in the small plazas scattered around. They're both on water. They both have large nature parks not far from downtown. I liked walking in both, though their size did make me feel like I'd seen everything each city had to offer in a surprisingly short time.

Both cities have culture as expressed, for instance, in their large number of museums (an unexpectedly large number given their official sizes, made even more surprising by their small feel).

Regarding Oslo in particular, its city center is bracketed by two large parks, elegantly designed and, this time of year, covered in a thick bed of grass. Art deco is the most common architectural style. A good chunk of the museums are run by the government and therefore free. Finally, accordions are the musical instrument of choice of Oslo's street musicians.

Bergen, though smaller, felt livelier than Oslo. It's also prettier than Oslo, with pastel buildings rising up the many hills in the city. Indeed, Bergen, a port city built among hills, is geographically like San Francisco or Seattle. Also, Bergen has history; the city dates back to the first half of the last millennium and the German (Hanseatic League) traders that made Bergen a base. As such, many of its buildings (often wooden) come from this time or were built in a similar style, a contrast to Oslo's buildings more recent (last century and a half) style. Also, Bergen's longer history means its buildings have a slightly greater variety of architectural styles than Oslo's.

I know the above paragraph makes Bergen sound a lot more enjoyable than Oslo. It's not -- they're both comfortable, likable, walkable cities. They're much more similar than they are different. Re-read the earlier paragraph about their commonalities.

The first thing a visitor to Norway notices is its cost. Everything (entrance fees, transit tickets, food, etc.) are about twice what I'm used to in the bay area. (Norway is a wealthy country due to its abundance of oil and fish.)

Language was not an issue or even something worth thinking about. Everyone spoke English. The language I heard most often besides Norwegian and English was Spanish; I guess that's the most common source for tourists this time of year.

Regarding food, seafood is common. This time of year that means salmon and shrimp. The fish comes in many forms--cooked, smoked, cured--and generally they are all good and fresh. (The Norwegians know how to prepare their fish.) Also this time of year, Norway's a great source for fresh, quality berries of all types; we ran into them everywhere.

From what I read in guidebooks, Norway is something of a mother state, and not just in terms of the social safety net. It's also firm (firmer than the U.S.) in areas such as driving rules: mandating seat belts and child seats throughout the vehicle, strictly enforcing speeding limits, and having stringent limits on blood-alcohol content for drivers. However, this philosophy didn't seem to have much impact on my experience in Norway. The only effect this may have had was, when booking hotel rooms, I noticed most hotel rooms only had single/twin beds. If you booked a queen bed for a couple, you'd generally find two singles pushed together. Perhaps this is a sign of propriety or a sign people are used to sleeping alone? On the other hand, I think this smaller-bed phenomenon might simply be more common in Europe, so I'm reluctant to read too much into it.

In contrast to these strict rules, Norway has one interesting law that reflects a philosophy that you can do whatever you want as long as you don't get in the way of anyone else: in Norway, you can camp anywhere for short periods, regardless of who owns the property, as long as the land isn't cultivated or fenced and as long as you aren't too close to a building. Pretty cool. :)

Incidentally, I feel obligated to compliment one particular guidebook. As many people know, when I travel I often bring along a couple of guidebooks, mostly to get independent viewpoints and also to make sure I don't miss anything. This time one of the guidebooks I brought was the Insight Guide to Norway. Of all the guidebooks I've read on all the trips I've done, this had a history and culture section heads above the others. Not only was the section very extensive, it was written in a interesting and, most importantly, lively fashion as it ranged over topics from the evolution of language and the evolution of the transportation system to Norwegian history and governance. Also, the guide provided insights into the culture; for instance, in the sports and nature section, it observed that the most popular sports are individual ones, not team ones as in most other countries. For these reasons, as I didn't finish the book during my trip (the majority of the book was devoted to these topics, not individual destinations), I felt compelled to continue reading the book for months after the trip, a strong testimony to the enthralling nature of the writing. This writer is simply better than other guidebook writers I've read. (One caveat, however: the book wasn't useful as a sightseeing guide; e.g., it often lacked details about particular places, listing only name and address, not what's interesting about the place.) I believe people who don't travel to Norway may nevertheless find reading this guidebook enjoyable.

Neat linguistic facts:

• The Nordic Language Convention gives "citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs."
• The Nordic languages are, to some degree, mutually intelligible.
• According to wikipedia, "The Norwegian language has been jokingly said to be 'Danish spoken in Swedish' due to the Norwegian and Danish vocabularies being so closely related while the language's phonology and prosody is more similar to Swedish."