Norway General Tips by FletteMette

Favorite Thing: I've collected some links you might find useful when you're planning a trip to Norway - and when you're travelling around Norway. (This tip will look *very* messy if you look at it through the "travel guide" - please access this tip through my Norway page - that way links etc will work!)

Transport:

* Time tables and route suggestions: www.rutebok.no
* Train travel:
www.nsb.no
* Airlines (for domestic flights):
www.norwegian.no
www.sas.no
www.wideroe.no
*Airport information:
www.avinor.no
* Airport buses (many different cities):
www.flybussen.no
* Long-distance buses all over Norway:
www.nor-way.no
* Cheaper long-distance buses (website in Norwegian only):
www.lavprisekspressen.no
* Hurtigruten / the coastal voyager:
www.hurtigruten.no
* Boats / ferries / buses in the fjord region:
www.fjord1.no
* Norway in a Nutshell (and other round trips):
www.norwaynutshell.com
* Cruise ferries between Norway and Denmark:
www.colorline.com
www.fjordline.com
* Cruise ferries Oslo - Copenhagen, and Bergen - Haugesund - Stavanger - Newcastle:
www.dfdsseaways.com


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Favorite Thing: "I only speak English - will it be difficult to travel in Norway?" This question is asked surprisingly often - and the short answer is: You'll be fine! ;o)

I am sometimes tempted to say that us Norwegians don't speak English at all, and that all tourists trying to cross the Norwegian border will in fact have to take a rather complicated Norwegian language & history test - and if you fail, then it's bye-bye;o) ...but I guess that wouldn't be totally and completely true.

We do of course learn English in school in Norway (most also learn some German or French or Spanish - or another language) - and most people under the age of...50? 60? speak decent - or even good - English. Films and TV shows (except children's movies) are always shown in their original language, with Norwegian subtitles - and I guess that also helps in teaching us English. ;o) I'm not saying that you should expect us to be totally fluent in English, but most are able to hold a basic conversation.

However, it is polite to ask if the person speaks English, instead of just taking for granted that everyone does - at least if you're talking to someone who doesn't work in the tourist industry.

Do you speak English? - Snakker du engelsk? (But you might as well just ask in English)


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Favorite Thing: Norway shares its latitude with Alaska, Greenland and Siberia - but compared to these places most of Norway has a mild climate. The Gulf Stream is a powerful Atlantic ocean current, which transports warm water from its origin in the Gulf of Mexico towards the shores of Norway - thanks to the Gulf Stream the temperature difference between southern, coastal Norway and northern parts of continental Canada is on average almost 30°C in January - even though they're at about the same latitude.

Norway's climate shows great variations - from the southernmost point, Lindesnes, to the northernmost, Knivskjelodden (no, the North Cape is actually *not* the northernmost point!) there is a span of 13 degrees of latitude. (The distance is about the same as from southern Norway to the Mediterranean!) The average annual temperature varies from 8°C along the western coast, to below freezing in the mountains. In Bergen, on the western coast, you may pick snowdrops and wood anemones in early March - while there was still a record-breaking 240 cm of snow on the ground in Tromsø (in northern Norway) in the beginning of May 1997. (I live in Tromsø now, and how I miss spring in Bergen...!)

In the coastal areas of southern and western Norway the winter is short and usually quite wet - sleet and rain is more common than snow. The inland areas can get very cold indeed, and the lowest temperature ever measured in Norway is -51,4 °C, in Karasjok in the far north. The coldest months of the year are January and February, the warmest is July - the highest recorded maximum temperature is 35 °C. (Even northern Norway can occasionally get temps above 30°C, thanks to the midnight sun - but daytime temps in the 10-20 range is the norm.)


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Favorite Thing: Norway is a very long, narrow country - and a quite large part of it extends to the north of the Arctic Circle, at 66° 33' N. To the north of the Arctic Circle you will experience the polar night during winter - and the midnight sun in summer. During the polar night, the sun is continuously below the horizon - and the further to the north of the Arctic Circle, the longer the polar night lasts. In Tromsø, at approx. 70° N, the polar night lasts for two months - from November 21st to January 21st.

Many people think it stays completely dark during the whole polar night - but there are actually some hours of soft, bluish daylight in the middle of the day (At least in mainland Norway, on the islands of Svalbard it is darker). When the weather is nice and the sky clear it gets quite light - with beautiful, glowing, reddish colours on the sky to the south.


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Favorite Thing: In summer you can see the midnight sun in the regions to the north of the Arctic Circle - during this time the sun never drops below the horizon, and is visible both day and night.

As mentioned previously, a large part of Norway is situated to the north of the Arctic Circle - and the further north you get, the longer the season of the midnight sun. In Tromsø, at around 70° N, the sun doesn't drop below the horizon for two whole months - between May 21st and July 21st.

Many people living in the Arctic tend to sleep less in summer - when it's sunny outside, a barbecue or a football match at 02 in the morning might seem like a perfectly reasonable idea - when it never gets dark you don't feel as tired, so you'll have to look at your watch to know when it's bed-time! :o)

Some say the midnight sun isn't all that special - and yes, it *is* the same sun as the one you'll see in Bratislava, Bangkok or Buenos Aires ;-) - but I really do think seeing the sun shine all through the night is a pretty special experience.


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Favorite Thing: Norway has chosen to stay outside the European Union - which means that the European Union currency, euro, is not in use here. The Norwegian currency is the krone (NOK) - 1 krone = 100 øre. At present, 1 USD equals around NOK 5.50.

Notes come in denominations of NOK 1000, 500, 200, 100 and 50, coins come in denominations of NOK 20, 10, 5 and 1, and 50 øre. There are ATM's everywhere (called Minibank in Norwegian.) All major credit and debit cards are widely accepted - some tourists are surprised by the fact that even taxis accept credit cards.

Banks are closed Saturdays and Sundays, and as a rule of thumb opening hours are 09 - 15.30 Mon - Fri, except Thursdays when many banks are open until 17. Some banks close at 15 in the summer months.

Oh, and tourists often wonder why some coins (1 and 5 nok) have holes in them? Simple explanation: to make the coins easier to recognise for the visually impaired.


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Favorite Thing: In addition to the 26 letters found in the English alphabet, the Norwegian alphabet contains the three letters Æ æ, Ø ø and Å å. These three letters are only found in Norwegian and Danish - Swedish, which is a language quite similar to Norwegian and Danish, has ä, ö and å. When looking for a phone number in a Norwegian phone book, remember that these three letters come last in the alphabet - and names starting with aa are alphabetised as if they were spelled with å, *if the aa is pronounced as å*. (Sometimes the aa in names is pronounced as å, sometimes as a...and there really is no rule to how and why and what, even Norwegians get that wrong occasionally... :o)

The pronunciation of these vowels is approximately like this:
Æ as the a in bad
Ø as the i in first
Å as the a in ball

The Norwegian and Danish languages are very similar, especially when written - but the pronunciation differs quite a lot. Norwegians, Danes and Swedes usually understand each others languages pretty easily, even though studies have shown that Norwegian speakers generally understand both Danish and Swedish much better than Swedes or Danes understand any of the other languages.


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Favorite Thing: There are two official written standards of Norwegian - bokmål and nynorsk. Bokmål ("book language") is by far the most common, used by almost 90% of the population, and you'll find that *most* newspapers, books and such are written in bokmål - however, the two languages have equal status, i.e. they are both used in public administration and on radio and tv, and school children have to learn both written standards.

Bokmål is quite similar to Danish, which was used for official purposes when Norway was under Danish rule (1397–1814).

Nynorsk ("New Norwegian") is modelled on the Norwegian dialects, and most spoken dialects are closer to nynorsk than to bokmål. Nynorsk was developed by Ivar Aasen, who travelled throughout Norway in 1840-1850, gathering information to build a Norwegian written language closer to the spoken dialects.

Some sample sentences, just to show you that the difference between bokmål and nynorsk is quite significant:
Nynorsk: Eg kjem frå Noreg. Eg heiter...
Bokmål: Jeg kommer fra Norge. Jeg heter...
English: I come from Norway. My name is...

Norway has hundreds of clearly distinct dialects - and none of them are completely similar to any of the two written standards...:o) In the various dialects, even a word such as "I" differs considerably - people from different parts of the country would refer to themselves as jæi, eg, æ, e, æg, i, je, jæ, æi... but all Norwegians are able to understand every Norwegian dialect. (However, the only accepted *written* forms of "I" are the bokmål jeg and nynorsk eg.) Are you confused yet...?:o)


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Favorite Thing: You will probably notice buildings with grass, wild flowers, shrubs and sometimes even a tree or two growing on top of the roof - the traditional grass roofs are most commonly seen on old buildings in the countryside, but even today some houses are being built using this technique.

A large number of cabins in the mountains have grass roofs - this way the cabins are somewhat camouflaged in the terrain. The grass roof provides excellent insulation, and it keeps the house warm in winter and cool in summer - it is energy-conserving, and very environmentally friendly. And it does look quite picturesque!:o)


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Favorite Thing: Between ca 800-1050, the vikings from Denmark, Sweden and Norway were busy plundering and pillaging along the coast of Europe. The Norsemen were expert ship builders, and their longships sailed up the rivers of France and Spain, conquered most of Ireland, Scotland and large parts of England - they even took control of areas in Russia and along the Baltic coast. The vikings were not all raiders and bandits, who attacked monasteries and abducted maidens - some also travelled on peaceful missions - to trade, and to colonise.

The vikings were skilled navigators and sailors, and sailed to new lands to the north and to the west of their homelands. The vikings founded settlements on Shetland, the Faroe Islands, the Orkneys, Iceland and Greenland - there was even a viking colony in Newfoundland, 500 years before Columbus rediscovered America.

Not all the people of Scandinavia at that time were vikings - a viking was someone who sailed out to plunder or to trade. Most scandinavians stayed peacefully in their own country, they were hard-working and poor farmers & fishermen.

There's a large Viking Age exhibition, including several ships, at the Cultural History Museum at Bygdøy in Oslo, and you'll find that most (if not all) historical museums in Norway will have a Viking Age exhibition. The viking ships in the exhibition at Bygd?y were found in burial mounds - the great viking leaders were buried in their ships.

And, contrary to common belief, no Viking ever wore a horned helmet..;o)


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