We have been here one month. Thirty-one days of fjords and ferries and brown cheese and tunnels through the middle of actual mountains, and I have come to the conclusion that Norway has quietly figured out several things the rest of the world is still sitting in a conference room arguing about.
I did not expect to feel this way. I expected to be floored by the scenery, and I was, but what surprised me more was being floored by the systems. The small decisions someone made a long time ago that just… work. Every day. Without anyone having to think about it. I am going to try to explain what I mean.
Roundabouts instead of traffic lights.
Almost every intersection here is a roundabout, and once you have driven in Norway for a few weeks you start to understand why this matters more than it sounds. Traffic moves. It just keeps moving. Nobody is sitting at a red light at midnight staring at an empty road waiting for permission to go, and the flow of it — the way everyone naturally takes their turn and merges and continues on — feels less like a traffic system and more like a personality trait the whole country shares. Efficient. Unbothered. Keep moving.
BankID does everything, and I mean everything.
Your doctor. Your school enrollment. Your cell phone bill. Your tax records. Your kid’s after-school signup. Every document, every appointment, every form that would take an American three phone calls and a password reset — all of it lives under one number that every Norwegian carries with them on their phone. I will be honest with you though, because this blog is nothing if not honest: we do not have BankID. As foreigners we are not able to get it yet, and some days that is genuinely hard. Things that take our friend Stine about 45 seconds on her phone take us considerably longer, or they just do not happen at all, and we have had to learn to laugh about it a little. But watching the system work for the people it was built for — watching someone pull up a legal document, sign it, and close their phone while we are still trying to remember which email address we used — it is genuinely impressive. When it works it really works.
Parking has a small fee, and that is entirely the point.
It is not expensive, but it is not free either, and that tiny amount of friction is enough to make people think twice about whether they actually need to drive, because the bus system is so good that most of the time the answer is no. The whole parking system runs through an app or a sticker in your window and operates largely on the honor system, which in Norway seems to work just fine because people here tend to do what they said they were going to do.
The houses are made of windows.
Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, glass facing the trees and the water and the hills, and almost every home has some version of a greenhouse room or a sitting room attached to it where you can be inside and outside at the same time. I did not fully appreciate this until I understood what winter looks like here — the sun is precious and they built their entire domestic architecture around catching every minute of it. Sitting in a Norwegian home on a clear day with light pouring in from every direction feels like something a person could get used to very quickly, and I have.
The trash system is color coded and it actually works.
Four bins, clearly labeled, and recycling is not an afterthought or a suggestion here — it is just infrastructure, the same way roads and pipes are infrastructure. Every property has the same setup and you do not have to think very hard about it because someone already thought hard about it for you. That is a theme you will notice here.
The grocery stores are small and they are perfect.
This took me a minute to adjust to and now I cannot imagine going back. The stores here are not warehouses. They are not overwhelming. You go in, you find what you need, and you leave, and the whole experience takes about fifteen minutes if you are moving slowly. Everyone brings their own bags — not because there is a law about it but because that is just what you do — and the products themselves tend to come with minimal packaging, which means less to sort through when you get home and less going into those four recycling bins. Norway has thought about the full cycle of a thing, from the moment you buy it to the moment you throw it away, and the grocery store is part of that thinking. I used to spend an hour at the grocery store. Here I spend fifteen minutes and I leave with exactly what I came for.
Children under 16 receive all healthcare completely free.
Every doctor visit, every specialist, every dental appointment — zero cost until age 16, and costs are capped for adults after that too. I took myself to the doctor when I came down with shingles, and the first question she asked me was not about my insurance or my payment method. She asked whether I was employed, and she asked it because she wanted to know if she could issue me sick leave on the spot. She could not, because our situation here is complicated as foreigners, but the fact that it was her first instinct — that her immediate thought was how to keep a sick person out of the workplace rather than how to process the transaction — told me everything about how this system is designed. A sick person should not be at work. That is the starting assumption here, and they built a whole infrastructure around it.
Sick leave is treated like the serious thing that it is.
If you are too sick to work you stay home, and your employer pays your full salary for the first 16 days without question. After that the government covers it for up to 52 weeks, and mental health is treated with exactly the same weight as physical health — a doctor can issue sick leave for burnout, for grief, for anxiety, for any condition that is genuinely keeping a person from functioning, because the medical community here understands that a person who is broken on the inside cannot do their job any more than a person with a broken leg can. What this does to workplace culture is hard to explain unless you have lived inside it, but people show up differently when they are not performing wellness they do not have.
Parental leave that actually gives parents time to be parents.
When a baby is born in Norway, parents receive 49 weeks of paid leave at full salary — or up to 61 weeks if they choose 80 percent pay — and that leave is divided into three parts: 15 weeks specifically for the mother, 15 weeks specifically for the father, and 16 weeks that can be shared however the family decides. The father’s weeks are use it or lose it, meaning if he does not take them the family simply loses that time, which is Norway’s way of making it clear that being present in the early months of a child’s life is not optional for fathers — it is expected. The whole country made that decision together and then wrote it into law.
Five weeks of vacation is the legal minimum.
Not a benefit. Not a perk that gets negotiated into a contract. Five weeks of paid vacation per year is the floor that every single employee in the country stands on, and most people take all of it, because the culture here actually supports the idea that a rested person is a better person, and a better person does better work.
School is shorter and somehow that seems to be fine.
The school days here are not the long exhausting stretches that have become normal in so many other places — kids go to school, they learn, and then they go outside, and somehow the sky has not fallen. Both things are true at the same time: learning matters here, and so does having a childhood, and nobody seems to be in the middle of a heated debate about whether those two ideas can coexist.
Business hours are posted on the outside of buildings large enough to read from the road.
Not a small sign near the door that you have to park and walk up to squint at — on the building itself, visible from the highway, because why would you design it any other way. I noticed this weeks ago and I am still thinking about it. It is the kind of obvious that makes you feel a little embarrassed on behalf of everywhere that has not done it yet.
They built tunnels through the mountains instead of roads over them.
Norway is full of mountains that have no interest in moving out of the way, and the Norwegian answer to this was simply to go through them — tunnels that stretch for kilometers in the dark, carved straight through solid rock, some of them long enough that you genuinely forget there is a mountain above your head. A few of them have roundabouts inside, which means there are intersections happening in the middle of a mountain and somehow that feels exactly right for this country.
The right to roam is written into law.
Allemansretten — the right of all people to move freely through nature — means that even privately owned land is open to you if you want to walk through it, run across it, ride your horse over it, or simply sit in it for a while. The outdoors here belongs to everyone, not just the people who own the deed, and that single legal principle changes the entire relationship between people and the landscape they live in. I cannot adequately describe what it feels like to know that you can go anywhere.
There are free rope courses built into the forests.
All over the country, tucked into the trees of public forests, there are rope courses and climbing structures that anyone can use at any time for free. No entry fee, no waiver, no attendant checking your ticket. Just there in the woods, because children should be able to climb things and the country decided to make that easy. Kids here grow up in the trees and I think about what that does to a person over time.
Most houses have robotic lawnmowers, and the window boxes are always full of flowers.
The little robot mowers just handle the lawn on their own while their owners are doing something else entirely, and the result is that every yard is tidy and every windowsill is bursting with color and nobody sacrificed their Saturday morning to make that happen. I realize this sounds like a small thing but it is representative of something bigger — the sense that time here belongs to the people living their lives, not to the maintenance of appearances.
When you buy a car in Norway it comes with two sets of tires.
Winter tires and summer tires, both of them, included with the purchase, because the roads change completely with the seasons and Norway long ago decided that everyone should simply be equipped for both rather than making it an optional extra. There is no upsell. There is no “would you like to add winter tires for an additional fee.” There is just here is your car and here are the tires you are going to need, and that is the end of the conversation.
Nearly 96 percent of new car sales in 2025 were fully electric.
Charging stations are everywhere, woven into the infrastructure the way gas stations are everywhere else, because Norway did not wait for the technology to catch up with the ideals — they built the systems first and the behavior followed. That is a pattern you start to notice here.
Electric scooters are everywhere too, and every single person is wearing a helmet.
Not most people, not the cautious ones, not the ones who read the safety pamphlet — everyone. Every person on a scooter, every person on a bike, every motorcyclist going 80 kilometers an hour on the highway is wearing a helmet without exception, and after a month here I have stopped being surprised by it because it just feels like the obvious thing. In America we debate helmet laws the way we debate everything else, endlessly and loudly, while people get hurt. Here the culture simply decided that if you are getting on something that moves you put a helmet on, and that was that. It is one of those things that sounds small until you sit with it for a minute and realize what it says about a place.
People’s High Schools exist and I think about them constantly.
The folkehøgskole — people’s high schools — are schools for young adults where the typical student is between 16 and 25, and you spend a year living and learning with other people, choosing a theme that interests you, in a place with no grades and no exams and no performance being measured at the end. You can study outdoor life or film or music or travel or any number of other things, and the government subsidizes it because Norway decided that a year of growing up without being evaluated is worth paying for. Many young Norwegians do this every year and I think it produces a certain kind of person — curious, self-directed, comfortable in their own skin — and I think that matters more than most countries are willing to admit. We have been eying a “Checkpoint Charlie” school for Gavin where you travel around Europe and learn and live the history
Everyone zippers in traffic and nobody makes a thing of it.
When two lanes merge into one, drivers from both sides take turns in perfect alternating sequence all the way to the merge point, without anyone accelerating to block the other lane or laying on the horn or making it a competition, and after a few weeks of driving here you start to feel almost emotional about it because it is such a clear demonstration that a group of people can agree on something and simply do it. The zipper works because everyone decided it would work. That is Norway in a sentence.
Retirement here is something people actually get to enjoy.
The standard retirement age is 67, with the option to begin drawing your pension as early as 62 if you have built sufficient rights, and once you start receiving it the pension is paid for the rest of your life — not depleted, not gambled, not dependent on the market having a good decade. If you worked, you are taken care of. The second half of your life belongs to you, not to the anxiety of whether you saved enough, and you can still work if you want to because the system allows it, but the difference is that you are choosing it rather than having no other option. I think about what that does to a person psychologically — how differently you move through your working years when you know what is waiting on the other side — and it seems important.
You cannot just fire someone here, and that changes everything.
Norway does not recognize at-will employment and the process of dismissing someone is so protected, so procedurally involved, so weighted in favor of the employee, that it simply does not happen casually. An employer needs a legitimate and documented reason, they are required to meet with the employee formally before any decision is made, and if the employee disputes the dismissal they have the legal right to remain in their position while the case is resolved — which can take months, sometimes longer. Courts here typically look for another solution before allowing a termination to stand, which means reassignment or coaching or a restructured role, and the result of all of this is that people are not scared at work. They are not performing loyalty or managing upward or calculating how to survive the next round of cuts. They are just doing their jobs because their jobs are genuinely secure, and I think that quiet security produces a kind of confidence and presence that is hard to replicate any other way.
The flip side of this, which I did not expect to appreciate as much as I do, is that there is very little litigation culture here. If you make a decision and something goes wrong, that is largely your situation to deal with. Adults are expected to be adults. The legal system is not something people reach for every time life disappoints them, and there is something deeply clarifying about living in a place where personal responsibility is not just a talking point but an actual operating principle.
Talking about politics here is completely normal.
In America most people learn pretty early not to ask someone how they voted unless you are ready for it to become a thing, but in Norway people will tell you before you ask — where they stand, what they are worried about, what they think the country is getting right and getting wrong — and it never feels like an ambush or a test. It feels like conversation. Like the kind of conversation adults can have with each other when they are not afraid of disagreeing, because disagreeing here is just part of thinking out loud together. I have talked about Norwegian politics with strangers more in one month than I have in years at home, and I have liked almost all of those conversations.
And Norwegians are direct in a way that took us a while to understand.
If something needs to happen it needs to happen and there is not a lot of space between identifying that and saying it out loud, which can feel abrupt if you are not used to it. Adam and I most recently are from Kansas, and if you know anything about Kansas you know that they will sit with you for a good twenty minutes before we get anywhere near the actual point. We will ask about your people and your drive and whether you need anything and we mean all of it, genuinely, because where we come from that is just how you treat a person. Walking into Norwegian interactions and getting straight to the matter at hand felt strange at first, a little cold even, and we kept offering pleasantries that nobody was waiting for and adding softening phrases that landed in the silence like something dropped.
But it is not cold. Once you understand it you start to see it as a form of respect — they are not performing warmth they do not feel and they are not wasting your time, they mean exactly what they say and they trust you to do the same. And then you put one of these same direct, efficient, no-nonsense Norwegians in an informal setting with friends and they are completely different people. Loud and funny and interesting and full of opinions they share freely and hobbies that would impress you, and the directness turns out to just be the door. Once you are through it the room is warm.
And then there is the cheese slicer. And the brown cheese. My personal favorite.
In 1925 a Norwegian cabinetmaker named Thor Bjørklund looked at the way people were cutting cheese and decided it was wrong, and he built a tool specifically to fix it — a thin metal blade with a slit in it that shaves cheese into perfect uniform slices and has been in every Norwegian kitchen drawer ever since. You will not find a home here without one. Guests are handed it without explanation because explanation is not necessary, everyone just knows, and what you slice with it is brunost — brown cheese, a soft caramelized block that is somewhere between cheese and fudge and something completely its own, sweet and slightly tangy and deeply Norwegian in a way I cannot fully explain. You slice it thin and lay it on bread and that is breakfast, that is snack time, that is Tuesday, that is life here, and I will be honest that it has become one of my favorite parts of the day.
But beyond the cheese itself — and I do love the cheese — I think about what the cheese slicer represents, which is that someone saw something that was not working, built something simple and better, and a hundred years later everyone is still using it without a second thought.
That is kind of the whole country.
I know I am forgetting things. I have been here a month and this country has more layers than I have had time to uncover, and I suspect that a year from now I will read this post and think of twelve things I left out.
But here is what I want you to know if you take nothing else from this. Norway is not just beautiful scenery. It is not a backdrop for Instagram photos or a bucket list checkbox. It is an entire culture of people who trace their roots back to the Vikings — a civilization that was navigating oceans and building communities when most of the world was still figuring out how — and that history lives in the way Norwegians carry themselves today. In the directness. In the self-sufficiency. In the quiet confidence that they know how to take care of each other and they always have.
They are wonderful people and this is a beautiful country and if you ever find yourself with the chance to come here, I want to ask you one favor. Skip the big cities, or at least do not stop there. Get yourself to the small towns. Sit somewhere with a cup of coffee and just watch how people move through their days. Talk to someone if they will let you, and most of them will. That is where you feel it — all of it, the people and the pace and the culture and the history — in a way that no fjord photo has ever been able to capture.
More From Norway
- Norway With Kids — The Complete Family Travel Guide
- Two Weeks In Norway — Here Is The Truth
- Kristiansand Day Trip
- Lillesand Day Trip
- Driving and Recycling in Norway — Things That Surprised Us
- How We Brought Poppy to Norway
Q: Is Norway a good country to live in?
A: Norway consistently ranks among the best countries in the world to live in, and after one month here with our family we understand why. The systems — healthcare, sick leave, parental leave, retirement, education — are built around the idea that people come first. The culture is direct, the outdoors is accessible to everyone, and the quality of life is unlike anywhere we have lived before.
Q: What is BankID in Norway and why does it matter?
A: BankID is Norway’s national digital identity system. It allows Norwegians to access virtually every government, medical, and personal document through a single secure login on their phone. From registering your children for school to signing legal documents to paying your phone bill, BankID handles it all. Foreigners living in Norway cannot access BankID immediately, which can make the early months of settling in significantly harder.
Q: How long is parental leave in Norway?
A: Norwegian parents receive either 49 weeks of paid leave at 100 percent of their salary, or 61 weeks at 80 percent pay. The leave is divided into three parts: 15 weeks reserved for the mother, 15 weeks reserved for the father (which are lost if not used), and 16 weeks that can be shared however the family chooses.
Q: Are electric vehicles really that common in Norway?
A: Yes. In 2025, nearly 96 percent of new car sales in Norway were fully electric vehicles, making Norway the global leader in EV adoption by a significant margin. Charging infrastructure is woven throughout the country, including in small towns and along mountain routes.
Q: What is brunost and why do Norwegians love it?
A: Brunost — brown cheese — is a uniquely Norwegian product made from whey that has been cooked down until the sugars caramelize, giving it a soft, slightly sweet, fudge-like flavor. It is sliced thin using the ostehøvel, the Norwegian cheese slicer invented in 1925 by cabinetmaker Thor Bjørklund. You will find both on every Norwegian breakfast table, in every Norwegian kitchen drawer, and in the heart of anyone who has spent real time in this country.
Q: Is Norway worth visiting beyond Oslo and the major fjords?
A: Absolutely — and honestly, the smaller towns are where Norway reveals itself most fully. Places like Arendal, Lillesand, and Kristiansand on the southern coast offer the culture, the pace, and the people without the tourist infrastructure of the larger cities. If you want to feel Norway rather than just see it, head south and slow down.
After Norway we drove south into Denmark — if that is on your radar too, here is everything we know about Denmark with kids, including the Lego House in Billund which deserves its own trip entirely.
Dreaming of a trip like this for your own family? Here is how working with a travel advisor actually works, or come plan your trip with me. 💙
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