‘OMG, why are you stressing so much about everything?!’ - is the most common question I hear from my husband. And yes, I admit I am a ball of pressure, but there is a simple explanation about that…

First of all, dear Norwegian of mine, the South is a place where people are driving recklessly and you rarely get a chance to walk on a zebra crossing - you need to run at least as fast as Usain Bolt, because no one has the time to wait on you! Also, from early age every person carries the burden of high expectations. Youngsters must be excellent in everything - they need to be the most beautiful, the smartest, the most successful, etc., so their families will be proud and their moms will make the haters hate even more. No one likes losers and the competition is serious. That’s why people in the North might perceive South europeans as hyperactive or over motivated, but it is just how we are coping with life, deal with it.

Another thing, battles for the best tomatoes on the market teach you to be nimble and cunning, so that no one would even stand the chance to prepare a better salad than you!

   Do you get why I am ‘stressing all the time’ now? Let’s see how my other half, proudly representing the whole country, is dealing with everyday life

 I. Patience is an integral flex 

    Ladies and gentlemen, forget about the cliché trip to India and visiting the Shaolin monks to find inner peace. All you need to do is book a flight to Norway instead, and you will experience  unprecedented feeling of calmness and relaxation.  You wonder why? - because Norwegians are the rulers of patience and I still haven’t figured out what can actually make them mad. 

   Here, people have the mysterious power to listen to you without interrupting and they answer always in a polite way, often accompanied with a smile. People, no matter what status they have in the society, are always kind to you, regardless of your status in the society. In the South we tend to see people as equals or losers, based on the expectations scale I mentioned earlier. Northerns are thankful  and appreciate the small beautiful moments in life. 

   In the land of fjords, people like to be helpful, but if by some force majeure they cannot solve the issue you have, they will give you eternal hope by saying ‘Det ordner seg.’ *.  

   So, ladies, if you expect a guy that trows plates around the house when you have a discussion,  I  must disappoint you. Instead, you get free psychological help - a Norwegian will observe carefully your … let’s call it a performance, and will kindly ask you to sit down and share your thoughts. That does not mean nordmenn are emotionless. You should in fact be very, very scared - remember where those guys are coming from -  a land shaped by the deep, dark and cold Norwegian sea splashing over rocky mountains with powerful roars. Even The Rock won’t be able to help you if you somehow unlock this Jumanji level.

II. Sports and hiking are sacred

     The Vikings were people with strong will and muscled bodies who roamed trough continental Europe, Iceland, Great Britain and America. How did they do that? - Simply put,  they were tough. The good news is that the contemporary Norwegians inherited the need to be in a good shape. 

     It is a usual sight employees to be dressed in hiking gear, because they scheduled a quest of amazing views right after work. Closeness to nature is the best relaxation and medicine here. In fact, there is a perfect term for this - friluftsliv , which means life in open air. People just love getting disconnected from all the fuzz. If you expect to binge watch some series in bed on a rainy Sunday, you couldn’t be more wrong  - no  weather is capable of stopping the Norwegian thirst for friluftsliv. I mean, Norway keeps setting records in amount of gold medals in the Winter Olympic Games, so it is no surprise that they rarely worry about the forecast.   

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    Now it's the time to introduce you to the most famous quote in Norway ever: ‘There is no such ting as bad weather, only bad clothes.’. So, if you are planning to complain about your soaking wet shoes, it’s only your fault that you didn’t get better ones.

   There are all kinds of reality shows on TV where participants test their physical strength, but my favourite is Norges tøffeste (Norway’s toughest),  which presents couple of  strong people, showing what kind of freaky stuff they can do, and everybody else gets jealous of their superhuman skills.

   Wait a second! This must be the answer to the mystery why Norwegians don’t get mad - they are too tired for your drama after all the adventures they’ve completed!

    Every rule has exceptions, so don’t blame it on me if you meet a lazy Norwegian.

III. Sharing the house work is only fair

      If anybody needs a masterclass about gender equality, they need to visit a Norwegian household. While in a lot of countries around the globe it is considered normal or traditional that women take care of the household chores, in Norway it is a pleasure and duty for both women and men.  I can assure you that every Norwegian man knows how the washing machine works and if the lady gets back from work tired, he would prepare the dinner and there will be no grumpy faces involved. 

    There are two main and pretty objective reasons why this is so true: 

    A. Scandinavians pursue  independence since early age. As you can see from the diagram below, Northern europeans are way less likely to be living with their parents after reaching maturity. In the South youngsters usually have two reasons to stay longer with their parents: traditions to run a family business (Italy), or difficulties to be financially stable (Eastern Europe).

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      Scandinavian countries offer better conditions for young people to be on their own, which is a result of stable economies and good social security. Being champions puts a lot of pressure on those countries, due to their effort to set an example and help others to reach the same. 

   B. Likestilling*  is a critically important value for the Norwegian society and it is teached and practised with devotion. Norway is one of the leading countries when it comes to slamming any form of discrimination. This is why it would be insulting and shameful for your man to reject his enthusiasm to fill up the dishwasher. 

  Norway is pretty hardcore when it comes to taking care of a newborn - both parents have equal amount of payed leave to take care of their baby which is 15 weeks with full payment for each. That’s pretty cool, because the father is way more involved, compared with other countries, and the mother can go back to work sooner, instead of being away for one whole year. 

   If you think about it, here genders were pretty much equal since the Viking times, as women were participating in armed conflicts side by side with their men… I guess guys are returning the favour now. :) 

     Based on everything I said, you can basically get an emotionally stable Thor to clean around the house … and if that’s not hot, I don’t know what is…

*Det ordner seg: It will be alright; literal translation: it will arrange itself

*Likestilling: concept for equality and fair distribution of power, influence and resources. It is a term used in context of gender, ethnic, religious and all kinds of equality and it is infiltrated in all spheres of life.

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