Dear foreign student!

So you’ve come to Norway for the first time. You’ve probably learned a whole lot of new stuff already, like that polar bears don’t walk freely around in the streets of Oslo and that a ten minute ride on public transport costs about the same as what the average Sierra Leonean makes a month. If I’m not mistaken, you haven’t made a single Norwegian friend yet. Am I right? Thought so. And if you’re like most other foreign students, you probably won’t have made any by the time you go home.

You see, us Norwegians are what some would characterize as strange species. When you try to be friendly and speak to us in the seminar groups, we usually say things like «Mai næim iss Geir-Per» or «Arnljot» or other names that require at least a decade of training in tongue-acrobatics. And that’s pretty much all we’ll tell you. Because we really don’t want to talk to you, we don’t want to get to know you. At least not before we already do. That’s the thing about us Norwegians. We’re sceptical to the new, but friendly once you (in a miraculous way) get to know us.

But try to see it from our point of view. It’s only in the past hundred years or so that we’ve come down from the cliffs by the fjords and started moving to places where there are more people than cows per km². Until then the only people the Norwegian man spoke to was his family, and maybe the local priest and merchant every other month or so. So imagine then that the Norwegian man, after hundreds of generations living like that, had to learn a whole new way of socializing when he moved to the city to look for work when Norway became industrialized. You can imagine it takes a while to get used to.

So seriously; how do you get to know a Norwegian? Well, if you start by flattering us you’re doing good. The flattering works even better when the Norwegian you are talking to is drunk. However, if you’re not into the whole getting wasted-thing, there are still a few things you could try. An unknown truth among most foreigners is that almost all friendships between Norwegians at some point have begun by having a conversation about the weather. In fact, if you’re in a setting where people are sober, one of few socially accepted topics for having a conversation with a complete stranger is the weather. A typical example of how this can work is as follows:

– Bad weather today, huh?

– Yeah, but they said on TV2 that it’s going to be better tomorrow.

– Yeah, I saw that. It was Eli Kari Gjengedal (weather reporter on Norwegian TV2 and yet another tongue twister) yesterday, wasn’t it? She’s hot.

– I know.

And (TADA!) you have found something you have in common and can go on to talk about other things.

So there you have it. Good luck with the friend making. And if you still don’t have any Norwegian friends at the end of the year you could always try adding me on Facebook.

Lots of love,

Anders R. Christensen