The Norwegian Poeple

One in eight Norwegians lives in their country's capital, Oslo. Ask any of them if Oslo is a good place to live in, and you will almost get the same answer from all of them: "Why yes! Just a short half-hour ride on the underground and you can be in the middle of the forest!

If you take a tour out on the underground one Sunday afternoon, you will find out that Norwegians really feel at home in the forest. In winter if you don't go skiing, you can't consider yourself a human. The country has many slalom skiers, but cross-country skiing through the woods, over the frozen lakes, and up and down the hills is most popular.

Necessary things to be taken with on these tours are an orange and something called the matpakke, meaning "food-package". This so called "food-package", consists of two or three slices of buttered bread with cheese or sausage. This package is also taken to work on weekdays as lunch and is eaten in the silence half-hour called lunch-break.
Norwegians aren't used to speak to strangers at the bus stop or at the table next to them in a restaurant. But in the forest and in the summer life is different. People greet and smile to each other, even to strangers. But they also may be nice in towns depending on the weather.

Norway is very long and divided into many parts. People living in different parts are very different from each other, even though there are only four million of them. They have their own regional features in behaving. Some would say that there are more variations between the northern and the southern Norwegians than there are between the Norwegians living in Oslo and other capitals in Europe.
The reason why Norwegians drink alcohol so much is perhaps their shyness. Norwegians don't drink to have fun, but only to get drunk. That's why the sale of wines is strictly controlled and is only sold in special shops with limited opening hours.

Norway has the highest sale of news papers and books than of any other European country. Although most of the books are sold just before Christmas and is used for presents, but at least some of tem has to be read. There are a lot of books written in Norway too- although Ibsen used his first scholarship to buy a one-way ticket to get out of the country and didn't come back before 26 years. But on the other hand Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, the best-selling book in the world in the 1990's, was written in Norway. And when it comes to newspapers, according to some researches every day, out of 1,000 people, 520 will read a paper and there are 152 daily newspapers in Norway.

Norway has a lot of oil and according to their politicians, it is one of the richest countries in the world. It has a tradition of giving large amounts of money, collected by public request, to humanitarian aid.