Views and News from Norway

Norwegian police have been sent to Malmö in southern Sweden to help Swedish police with security at this week’s Eurovision Song Contest. Danish police are also taking part, because of terrorism concerns. Swedish broadcaster SVT, which is hosting the huge event this year since Sweden won the contest last year, said police have defined Eurovision […]

Norway’s powerful farm lobby is once again demanding far more state funding than even the current farmer-friendly government is offering. That sets the stage for more organized protests, at a time when consumers face empty egg shelves and rising food prices at the grocery store. All the unresolved issues within Norwegian farming have prompted various […]

He’s been depicted as a sword-wielding Viking back home in Norway, and Erling Braut Haaland showed himself to be fierce enough after scoring four times for his British football club Manchester City during the weekend. It marked a comeback of sorts for the Norwegian sports star, after a bit of a slump in recent months. […]

Oslo’s Munch museum has opened a highly acclaimed exhibition that offers insight into a little-explored side of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch: His close engagement with nature. Better known for his portrayals of anxiety and other human emotion, Munch also delved into landscape art and insisted that people are not separated from our natural environment, but […]

More sellers and buyers entered Norway’s weak housing market last month, and real estate brokers claim it picked up after a very chilly winter. More people are attending open houses, they claim, and there’s a better balance between supply and demand. “Quite a lot of homes have been listed for sale,” Grethe Meier, managing director […]

Norway’s central bank kept interest rates steady on Friday and several economists no longer think they’ll be lowered later this year. Others think the country’s weak currency, meanwhile, is undergoing an identity shift, from being a “petro-krone” to one influenced more by Norway’s financial wealth than its oil. Norges Bank’s committee on monetary policy and […]

Shootings, stabbings, gang violence and drug seizures have become commonplace in Norway over the past few years, especially in the capital. The country’s left-center government hasn’t been willing to boost funding for more police in Oslo, but public outcry may force the rural-oriented Center Party to alter its priorities. Oslo experienced another major scare late […]

The controversial Norwegian track and field coach Gjert Ingebrigtsen has responded to his indictment for family violence this week with a poem on social media. His medal-winning sons may not take kindly to his use of a song text that suggests he’ll “rise like the day … unafraid” and he’ll “do it a thousand times […]

… if not all over, at least in some parts of Southern Norway. After one of the longest and coldest winters in decades, cherry blossoms like these near the National Library in Oslo are a welcome sight. Norwegians have even begun celebrating Hanami, the Japanese tradition of enjoying the blossoms during a short but very […]

The cost of a plastic bag at the grocery store in Norway jumped last year to NOK 4.25 but is now set to rise again. The bag fee is aimed at further reducing their use. The retailers’ own environmental fund (Handelens Miljøfond) doesn’t think plastic bag consumption has declined enough. Now a punitive fee of […]