I catch myself wondering what women – or men for that matter – are preoccupied with outside Norway. I’ve had a couple of political updates on my facebook wall this past week, I haven’t received as much feedback on anything I’ve ever posted. I love engaging discussions ;-)
Both posts were concerning matters I find, what we in Norway call, “I-country-problems” – freely translated by me – hahaha. The “I” comes from industrialised countries – as opposed to undeveloped countries. I find it harder and harder to stay silenced, when I realise that we (Norwegians) really engage in totally stupid and hardly important matters. The latest discussion I find totally waste, is whether we should ban begging or not. And I’m like – seriously? Because we are perhaps the wealthiest country in the world, we don’t want to be bothered by people in need?
Okay – this is my personal opinion – this is not spoken on behalf of the Norwegian people. The matter is of course not as simple as that. There are so many people coming to Norway to beg, and probably too many are here due to illegal trafficking. Not good at all, but I so don’t think that will be solved by banning begging.
I live in Stavanger – likely to be the most prosperous city in Norway due to the oil-industry – at least that has been the story up until now. It all started in the early 70s, we had some amazing politicians who just decided to go for the title “Norwegian Oil-capitol” – and boy did they succeed! We should be so grateful to these people, but lately I’ve started to wonder if we’ve become more spoiled than grateful… Not that we’re not grateful, but I think we might be too absorbed with our “I-country-problems” ;-) (Isn’t that just the best English word….. hahaha ;-)
I do feel we live in the best country in the world. Really! We have so much to be grateful for, and so few reasons to complain, still, I wonder if we might have become addicted to complaining. We do it all the time! I think that’s the case in many Western countries, but there are better reasons in other countries, not very many good reasons in Norway. I keep on wondering how our nation might seem to foreigners. Are we as self-absorbed as we might seem? Are we selfish not wanting to be part of the European Union? Why are so many Norwegians opposed to that? Shouldn’t we share our wealth? Did you know that our country has saved money equivalent to around two hundred thousand USD per Norwegian? And we have so many vacancies that Norwegians don’t want, shouldn’t we welcome more people from abroad wanting to come and work here?
Anyway…. I read this humurous article in my favourite magazine – a Danish one called Eurowoman. They wrote about a Scandinavian survey where, I think thousands of, Scandinavians were asked about each other:
- 67% of the participants were under the impression that the Danes drink the most and that they are the most “life-loving” Scandis.
- Swedes – sorry, Swedes, but most Scandinavians think you are the most boring, authoritarian – but also the most productive people in Scandinavia.
- Norwegians? Well – I just loved this Danish word – lalleglade! Hah, I had to do google translator to check if I understood, and in English it’s translated to silly, but I don’t think that’s right – at least you’ll have to ad naive silly…. So, most Scandinavians see us as naive-silly, nature-loving, but also healthiest :-) Not so bad I guess.… ;-)
Fun reading and interesting ;-)
I have decided that this year – I am not going to practice slow living, but – I will pay more attention to all the good reasons for living in this wonderful, great, amazing and healthy country – I will start working towards being more grateful, and not taking so much for granted.
I will wrap up this blog posting with a tribute to the greatness of Norway and our Norwegian heritage :-)
From top left: Pulpit Rock (not very far from where I live!). Bryggen in Bergen. Our National Ballet and Opera house in Oslo. Norwegian icons. From Hardanger, a beautiful area in the western part of Norway. Edward Munch (self-portrait). Sweaters from Moods of Norway. Fridtjov Nansen, Roald Amundsen and Henrik Ibsen – Norwegian heroes :-)
Peace and love to you all – and hope I’ve made you want to visit Norway ;-)
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