On March 31, Norway’s biggest TV channel, state-owned NRK1, broadcast a special half-hour program, beginning at 9:15 PM — prime time, mind you! — entitled Festen etter fasten, or “The Party after the Fast.” The occasion was the end of…
A couple of years ago I wrote here about a couple whom I described as Norway’s answer to Britain’s Harry and Meghan, although it now occurs to me that the royal half of the couple in question might also be…
I was born and raised in New York City and lived there until my early forties. I loved the city of my birth, although from time to time, like many others (even in those last days of the twentieth century,…
If there’s anything uglier and stupider than most of the songs performed at the annual Eurovision Song Contest, it’s the boneheaded politics that have, from time to time, intruded upon this gaudy, glitzy international event. This year’s big show won’t…
What do you think of when you hear the words “Nordic welfare state”? Government-run health care, with reasonable fees for regular check-ups but long waiting lists for certain life-saving treatments? Free university education, the proviso being that there may not…
“These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognize the years of one’s prime, always remember that.” – Jean Brodie, a girls’ school teacher, in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark…
I don’t have kids, but for several years I’ve belonged to a Facebook group for people who absolutely despise Norwegian Child Welfare Services, known in Norway as Barnevernet. Many if not most of the group’s members are parents whose children…
I grew up in a little Norwegian fishing community that was absorbed into Seattle proper. Just about every family that wasn’t pure Norwegian liked to boast about having an Indian princess in their lineage. It was always a Cherokee princess…
Democratic socialist romantics often justify their views by lifting up the Norwegian system and disregarding socialist-run states like Venezuela, Russia, and Cuba, which have experienced corruption, poor management, poverty, and/or imperialism. Norway, in contrast, is fetishized and exemplified as the…
