Norway is Perfect. Too Perfect.
This Scandinavian country seemed to have some dark and unsettling secret, and I was determined to find out what it was.
For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.
Three weeks ago, Michael and I arrived in Norway, and it was impossible not to be impressed.
Riding into Oslo from the airport on the sleek train, the countryside is almost comically quaint and beautiful. And there’s no ugly urban sprawl: one minute you’re in the country surrounded by pine trees and butterflies, the next minute you’re breezing effortlessly through the city surrounded by, well, more pine trees and butterflies.
That’s because Oslo itself is full of lush green parks. There’s also no graffiti, or litter, or advertising, and they even have these really cool floating saunas that go out into the Oslo Fjord. I wouldn’t be surprised if this city has figured out a way to fit the pigeons with little diapers.
As for the people, they’re all tall and blond and beautiful. And fit! Everyone looks like they just came from practice for the Nordic cross country ski team. But they would have driven into town in an electric car, because they’re also incredibly environmentally conscious.
And they’re polite. No one snarls, and people aren’t always on their phones. The children make eye contact. There are no Karens, but there are also no people constantly accusing every woman of being a Karen. In Norwegian, there is literally no word for “snark” and no concept of “insufferable,” but they do have seventeen different ways to say, “I can’t believe I qualify for another government program!”
Yeah, okay, I just made up those last few facts, but hey, they feel true.
Norwegians are like Canadians, except they don’t smell like maple syrup. No, they all smell like they just got out of the goddamn shower.
And every one of them speaks perfect English. Whenever I’m in a country where I don’t know the language and I meet a local, I never presume they speak my language. I always first ask, “Do you speak English?” But here in Norway, I’ve stopped doing that, because every time I did, the Norwegian would give me an amused little smile that said, You bet your sweet Kvikk Lunsj I do!
There has to be a catch, right?
Oh, I know it’s cold and dark in Scandinavia most of the year. Michael and I are here in July when everything is bright and lovely — even at midnight! But the other seventeen months of the year, it’s cold enough here to freeze warts off your fingers.
Of course, even though it gets cold here, there are no potholes in the streets. How is that possible? Back in Seattle, it would drop below freezing maybe twice a year, and the roads were like trying to drive across the hardened lava flow at Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument.
And Norway is expensive, but I’m not sure Norwegians notice because they don’t have to pay for education or health care. Or lodging, entertainment, utilities, or groceries. Thanks to generous subsidies from all that North Sea oil, literally the only thing Norwegians have to pay for is waxed dental floss — and they can get the unwaxed kind for free.
Okay, yes, I’m making up more facts, but still: no place can be this perfect. Arriving in Oslo feels like the first act of a horror film. I’ve been here three weeks now, and I’m still twenty percent convinced I’m going to discover they’ve managed all this by making a deal with some ancient evil, and every few years they have to sacrifice some of their children to the forest trolls.
Or maybe Norway is like that movie Midsommar, which is set in neighboring Sweden. In that movie, an American girl played by Florence Pugh goes to visit a Swedish friend’s ancestral commune, but it turns out the old people are killing themselves in this big, disgusting ritual. Oh, and then the commune eats their bodies — and occasionally eats other people too, like two of Florence Pugh’s friends, and also her boyfriend, but that ends up making her happy because her boyfriend was kind of a jerk to her earlier in the movie.
Sorry, spoiler alert. But trust me, Midsommar is a really stupid movie. You’re just not supposed to notice because it’s so painfully artsy and pretentious.
It’s also possible Norway is nothing but a virtual reality simulation, like in another Florence Pugh movie I just spoiled for you, Don’t Worry, Darling. In that movie, it turns out a bunch of husbands are keeping their wives’ consciousnesses locked up in a fifties-style computer simulation to live out a fantasy of perfect domesticity. The men “go to work” every day, but that means logging out of the simulation to go to an actual job to pay for the simulation for themselves and their wives.
We also learn that one of the wives in the movie has actually known all along that they’re trapped in a simulation, but she’s gone along with it, partly because her dead children are still alive inside the simulation, but mostly because in the faux-1950s, she doesn’t have to download a whole new app for every goddamn little thing.
If all of Norway really is a computer simulation, what fantasy would people be living out here? I mean, I get the floating-sauna-in-the-Oslo-fjord thing, but lutefisk?
But no. Norway isn’t a computer simulation — just like it also isn’t an evil, elder-torturing cannibalistic cult or a slightly different evil cult that made a deal to sacrifice its children to the forest trolls.
It’s just a very homogenous, extremely educated country with sky-high social trust — in part because of the massive amounts of money pouring in from all that North Sea oil.
Which does bring up an interesting point: if Norwegians are so environmentally conscious, what the hell are they doing pumping that oil out of the North Sea? Sure, their country is “green,” but they’re sending all that oil to other countries where they quickly burn it and send it right up into the atmosphere, causing more Climate Change.
Norwegians may be painfully nice, and their country may be stunningly beautiful and incredibly livable. But they’re also a bit hypocritical.
Ha! I knew it! Norway isn’t perfect!
But, of course, this is all just sour grapes on my part. Because I’m seriously trying to figure out a way to deal with the cold and move here, so I can spend the rest of my life living in this fucking paradise on Earth.
Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at BrentHartinger.com.
Great post, Brent! Having lived there for 20 years, I’m happy to confirm that your made up facts are almost real facts. It can definitely feel that way.
One small word of caution though. If you do figure out how to survive the cold so you can live there forever, be prepared for the fact that you will never be perceived by the locals as “one of them”.
I have a Norwegian name, learned to speak the language without an accent, I’m white and have blue eyes. Still, after two decades, when colleagues introduced me to their friends they always said: “Meet Paul, he’s from Canada…
I loved this so much. And, if memory serves, Norway may have a problem with alcoholism if you need another notch in the imperfect belt. And isn’t whaling still a thing? The issue I see for all the homogenous countries is how they manage when immigrants and refugees create a more diverse society. (Answer: not well). There’s clearly more to ponder on the hallucination of Norwegian perfection.