Norway

August 2, 2020

    It’s 11:59AM. We are all at O'Hare Airport, Chicago waiting to get onto the plane. Each one of us have our bags packed and are counting down the time to get on. It’s midnight. Only one minute left until we can start our journey! 3...2...1…. GO! We all run onto the plane that we rented out and the pilot takes off within minutes. We are on our way to Norway! Trosmø, here we come! A few hours into the flight, we all decide to go to sleep. Each of us got around 7 hours of sleep before we made our first stop. The time of the flight in total is around 14 hours. Each of us had to pay $1,476 for the plane ticket, resulting in a massive $4,428 altogether… yikes… Well, anyway, back to the trip. The flight was long, and a bit boring, but it all paid off in the end when we landed in Norway. When we landed, it was around 8:15PM in Norway because of the time difference. The first day was somehow almost already over! Well, we decided to walk out of the plane and to go get our luggage. This took around 15 minutes or so, and then we were out! We chose to go outside and explore the city of Trosmø a bit while waiting for our taxi. We started walking toward the CBD area of the city. It was really nice, with some nicely shaped buildings, and a lot of lights everywhere. We looked at our challenges for this country: we had to see the northern lights, and to make fish soup! This would be easy. As we walked around the CBD, we saw some of the memorials for the vikings that used to be dominating the waters of Norway. The people walking on the streets were all wearing the bunads we were researching, and they looked nice. We told our taxi to pick us up at a certain corner of town. Luckily, we heard that the northern lights were out that night. We all crammed into the tiny taxi, and told the driver to take us to Ersfjordbotn Village. On the way there, during the 18 minute drive, we peered our heads out the window, and surely enough, there they were - the northern lights! They were beautiful. The lights reflected in the misty water that we were passing by. It was truly a nice sight. Each of us snapped a clear photo of them to ensure that we secured the challenge. Half of the challenges were already done. On the drive, we also saw some kids playing football in a field, one of the major local sports. When we arrived in Ersfjordbotn, we looked around for a restaurant on Google Maps that sold Norwegian Fish Soup, or referred to as Fiskesuppe by the locals in the area. We went into a restaurant called Bryggejentene AS and paid 50$ to the head chef to teach us how to make the special soup that we were searching for. This took around 30 minutes in total, but it was totally worth it! The fish soup was amazing. We finished our challenges, and it was only 10:30PM. We had a 12:00AM flight scheduled, so we were a bit ahead. We figured that we might as well explore a bit more of Trosmø when we got to the area. We took the 18 minutes drive back in the taxi, and when we got there, we decided to wander the city some more. When we got back to the city, we noticed how little low order functions the city offered. The smaller the city, the less low order functions there are. We were passing by some people walking, and they started telling us about the hidden economy there. The hidden economy consisted of work and labor, and it was a bit uncontrollable. We looked around some more in the city and saw the various ferry trips closing in on their final trips in the water. This city was beautiful. We started to walk back to the airport and just managed to catch our flight on time. Ethiopia, here we come!

Research

Culture:

- Norway’s past revolved around Vikings. A lot of the people in this country identify with rural culture.

- They eat a lot of seafood

- Inhabited by nomadic cultures

- Very into folk music, particularly the fiddle

- They wear bunads. Both men and women do.

- Religions include Oromo, Amhara, Somali, Tigray, Sidama, Gurage, Welaita, Hadiya, Afar, Gamo, Gedeo, Silte, and Kafficho

- Some foods include: Brunost - Brown Cheese, Sjømat - Seafood, Fiskesuppe - Norwegian Fish Soup

- They speak many variations of Norweigan

 - Johan Christian Dahl, Kitty Kielland, and Harriet Backer are some of the famous artists there.

- Norway is known for its excellent cinema industry

- Association football, ski jumping, and biathlon are some of the most popular Norweigan sports

- Norweigein families usually don’t contain more than 2 children.

- Boys and girls equally inherit the property of their parents

- Men and women have equal rights

- Norweigeins respect each others’ dignity

Fact Sheet:

Race Destination #: 1

Country Visited: Norway

Country Shape Classification: Elongated, has one of the world’s longest and most rugged coastlines in the world

Country Development Classification: Developed country

Specific Places Within Country Visited: Ersfjordbotn Village, Helgeland

Country Capital City: Oslo   Capital City Population: 681,067

Country Government Type: Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy

Current Leader(s) / Party(s): Prime minister: Erna Solberg, Conservative

Ethnicities (% breakdown): 83.2% Norweigan, 8.3% other European, 8.5% other

National Language(s): Bokmål Norwegian and Nyorsk Norweigian. Some people use Sami and/or Finnish languages.

Religion(s) practiced  (% practiced): Church of Norway: 70.6%, Muslim 3%, Roman Catholic 3%, other Christian 3.7%, other 2.5%, unspecified 17%

Traditional Cuisine Descriptions: Brunost - Brown Cheese, Sjømat - Seafood, Fiskesuppe - Norwegian Fish Soup, 

Traditional Dress Descriptions: Women normally wear bunad, which is a double-shuttle woven wool skirt or a dress. Men wear bunad too, but it is normally a three piece suit with embroidered colors.

Famous sites of country: Sognefjord, Pulpit Rock, Tromsø, Lofoten Islands, Viking Ships Museum, Oslo, Bygdoy Peninsula, Bryggen Hanseatic Wharf, Bergen, Tromsø's Arctic Museums, 

Country Population (most current available): 5.368 million

Country Population (in 1900) 2.231 million

Average Life Males 79.8 years     

Females: 83.7 years

National Unemployment Rate: 3.5%

Country Literacy Rate: 99%

Country Murder Rate: 0.51 

Crude Birth Rate: 11.099 per 1,000 population Crude Death Rate: 9.893 per 1,000 population

National Infant Mortality Rate: 1.921 per 1,000 births

FLIGHT INFO

Chicago to Tromsø - 14 Hours (2 Stops): $4428 ($1476 x 3)

Tromsø to Addis Ababa - 14 hours 20 minutes (2 Stops): $1613.10 ($537 x 3)

TRANSPORTATION INFO

18 mins to and from Tromsø and Ersfjordbotn ($6)

SLEEP

7 hours on flight to Tromsø

7 hours on flight to Addis Ababa

CHALLENGES

Learn from a local in Ersfjordbotn Village how to make Fiskesuppe, the Norweigan fish soup. (LOCATION: ERSFJORDBOTN VILLAGE)

Visit the Arctic Circle at night and get a photograph of either the Northern Lights or a cool mountain formation. (LOCATION: Helgeland)

ALL WEBSITES FOR COUNTRY

https://globaledge.msu.edu/countries/norway/government

https://www.investopedia.com/updates/top-developing-countries/

https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/norway-population/

https://www.indexmundi.com/norway/religions.html

https://www.2foodtrippers.com/norway-food-favorites/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/bunad

planetware.com/tourist-attractions/norway-n.htm 

https://www.lifeinnorway.net/life-expectancy/

https://tradingeconomics.com/norway/unemployment-rate

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NOR/norway/literacy-rate

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NOR/norway/murder-homicide-rate

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NOR/norway/birth-rate

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NOR/norway/death-rate

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NOR/norway/infant-mortality-rate

https://www.tripsavvy.com/culture-of-norway-illustrated-1626653

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-culture-of-norway.html