Norway Local Custom Tips by diocletianvs

Must hear: Röyksopp

They are Norwegian duo coming from Tromso, growing surrounded by glacial imagery, Northern Lights and light summers. Torbjorn Brundtland and Svein Berge managed to capture the atmosphere of Norwegian landscapes in their music so well that once you hear their album Melody AM you'll just have to listen and listen all over again.

I discovered Röyksopp when one friend gave me their CD, months after I have returned from Norway. But once their CD landed into my CD player it didn't get out of it for weeks. Their music is an excellent reminder of Norwegian landscapes, summer "nights" with almost no darkness at all, of Norwegian shyness, way of life and their way of loving.

Fabulous atmosphere, one can listen to it on and on and always find new details to enjoy.

And get addicted to it.
Oh yes, you can get Röyksopp addicted very easy.

17th May: National day

The Norwegian National Day celebrated on 17th of May is probably unique in the world since the center of the parade are Norwegian people and not rulers, politicians or military achievements.

In all towns of Norway regardless of their size colorful parades are organized. Most Norwegians are proud of their national costumes ("Bunads") and national flags, so the parade is very colorful, and air filled with national pride.

The first and the most important parade of the day is children's parade when school children march with their teachers.

If possible, be in Norway on 17th of May!
See my travelogue for more pictures describing the special atmosphere of this day.

Brunost

Recently one guy was stopped by security officers at the Amsterdam airport, and was asked not to touch anything until the anti-terrorist squad came. The reason of their concern was a small brown package that they thought was a plastic explosive. The story was hilarious in Norway where everyone enjoys brown cheese daily.

It certainly doesn’t look like cheese – it’s compact and it’s brown! But brunost is probably the most popular single Norwegian food product - next to cross country skiing and trolls there are few things more Norwegian than an open faced sandwich with Brunost.. Annual production of brunost is aproximately twelve million kilos or almost four kg per average Norwegian!

For more than 300 years Norwegian farmers have made cheeses from cow's milk and goat's milk and turned the leftover whey into different kinds of foodstuffs. The simplest was to just boil out most of the water from the cow's whey, and shape the remainder into a sweet, low-fat, pale reddish brown 'cheese'.

Brunost taste comes mainly from caramelised lactose and hence the product is sweet, with a hint of caramel, and tastes nothing like cheese at all. The use of goat's milk in some types adds another uncomparable taste that takes a little getting used to.

Main types of brown cheese are Prim, Ekte Geitost, Fløtemysost and Gudbrandsdalsost. Please don't ask me what's the difference – they all looked brown and tasted sweet to me. For details please go to www.tine.no , which is the largest producer of milk products and where I took this picture from.

The main use of Brunost is on (open) sandwiches and on top of Norwegian waffles.