Norwegian People

When you think of a typical Norwegian, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Being an Englishman, there are not any Norwegian celebrities in the UK and you don't generally see any in the media so what is the stereotypical Norwegian?.

When you think about the people of the Nordic countries, the first thing that comes to the mind is the Vikings, then perhaps ABBA, then probably Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

So, the men have long beards and wear horned helmets and the women are tall, blond haired and have huge "assets"... right, or is that the Swedish?. Again, these are all stereotypes of the Nordic people and far from the truth.

From what I experienced by the people I met, Norwegians are generally healthy, in terms of the food they eat, clean water they drink, fresh air and outdoor living culture. I did find a fair few had a smoking habit, probably more than my friends back in the UK.

They can be very straight to the point, and their openness to sexuality did rock my "stiff upper lipidness" at times, being an Englishman, but you get used to it.

However, being a foreigner in their country, I found that Norwegians were interested in learning about where you come from, what you used to do, eat, drink and everything that makes your home country what it is. It was good to talk about our differences and interesting to see how the two different peoples evolved to who they are now, but perhaps I am getting a bit deep here.

Many Norwegians love to try out their English on you. After all those years of learning English at school they want to finally use it and I wasn't complaining as it was easier for me to talk to them. This is not the case for everyone, but overall people would try their best.

Norwegians make the most of their summer, as expected living in their cold winter for five months. As soon as it is warm enough they use the outdoors as much as possible, going on trips, drinking outside, fishing, basically anything to get them out of the house.

Norwegians are a patriotic people who are proud of their country and independence gained in 1905 and celebrate this on May 17th each year (see Culture Page for more information).

I did see that many Norwegians are happy being and living alone and comfortable within their own company, but family also plays an important part in their lives and they generally have a strong bond with them.

Strange Names

Well, not strange to a Norwegian, but I had never heard many Norwegian names before so it was interesting to see male and female Norwegian names.

An example of male names include: Rune, Knut, Olav, Ola, Geir, Nils, Magne, Kjell, Trond, Thorleif, Sverre.

An example of female names include: Astrid, Hege, Mette, Aslaug, Grethe, Sissel, Toril, Lene, Ingunn, Kari.

The only problem I had is that Norwegians don't pronounce the letter J the same as in English, so on many occasions they would say my name as "Yon" rather than "Jon" (drove me crazy).

Overall

I found the majority of the Norwegian people I met to be warm, caring, kind, accepting, helpful, friendly, sharing, open, proud, inquisitive, interesting, so overall I felt happy and comfortable in their company.