[mogadsheu]

The thing about Norway is that it’s a cold, barren, remote place where very few people want to live. Most of the year it’s cold and gray, and most of the country is uninhabitable.

The result is that its natural resources haven’t been consumed to the degree that most developed countries’ resources have, and there aren’t as many people to consume them.

I find it a strangely fair situation. Their luck comes from having friendly neighbors who care about their well-being and responsible development.

[somenameforme]

History would disagree with you there pretty strongly. Norway (and Scandiland in general) was fought over for millennia, leading to an extremely rich, interesting, and bloody history - even well after the Viking era. As a somewhat random aside this [1] book is an extremely interesting read for anybody into history - the 'King's Mirror.' It's a book written around 1250 intended exclusively for the education of a Norwegian King. It takes the Plato-type style of a question and answer session between a learned man (father) and pupil (son).

It covers basically every aspect of life, but the most interesting thing about it that it was written near a millennia ago now, yet so many things in it feel so incredibly familiar. The Wiki page links to a bunch of different free translations. Here [2] is the one that I read.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konungs_skuggsj%C3%A1#Editions...

[2] - https://archive.org/details/kingsmirrorspecu00konuuoft

[marginalia_nu]

> so many things in it feel so incredibly familiar

I get this reading a lot of old texts. "De natura deorum" in particular struck me as downright uncanny. I've seen this exact discussion play out time and time again in discussion boards in the early 2000s. The only thing that's a bit off is that the tone is civil and level-headed.

Like the thing is 2000 years old, how long have we been having these arguments?

[SoftTalker]

> it was written near a millennia ago now, yet so many things in it feel so incredibly familiar

It's sometimes forgotten that 13th century humans were the same as us.

[godelski]

It's often forgotten how much conflict there was in Europe (and most of the world) in the 18th and 19th centuries. How this was fairly "normal"

It's really forgotten how relatively peaceful our time is. I'm not complaining, in fact, I want to protect it. And that means we can't forget what was.

https://youtu.be/UY9P0QSxlnI?t=10m5s

[somenameforme]

I would not ignore the 20th century here. WW1 and WW2 may have not taken up that many years, but their death tolls and overall impact were tremendous. Millions were also killed in Vietnam and Korea as well. Then there's things most people in the West are not so familiar with like the Indonesian mass killings [1], Nigerian Civil War [2], Chinese Civil War [3], and so on with numerous other major events with millions to tens of millions killed.

I also think it's clear that the reason that we call the Cold War, the Cold War, and not WW3 is because of nuclear weapons. If anything the general trendline seems to be for conflicts of far greater violence, intensity, and instability over time, but this is currently being masked by nuclear weapons among developed nations. Although the current trend of nations picking ever more idiotic 'leaders' is suggestive that even mutually assured destruction will likely give way as a deterrent, sooner or later.

It's a great time to support life becoming multiplanetary!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War

[JumpCrisscross]

Less the 19th century. The Congress of Vienna achieved a lasting peace after the Napoleonic wars.

[godelski]

Sure, but still quite a lot of conflict compared to now (my point about "relative"). Levels that I think people greatly underestimate. And those first 15 years were VERY bloody. (Napoleonic Wars was 1803-1815 for those that don't know and killed between 3.5m and 7m people)

But bloody European wars still include the Caucasian War, the First Carlist War (where 5% of the Spanish population died), Austro-Prussian, Franco-Prussian, the Third Carlist War, and Russo-Ottoman wars. Not to mention some very bloody revolutions: Greek, Hungarian, Italian, French (which cascaded), and so on.

I think it's also important to remember that Europe in 1800 had about 195 million people and rose to a bit over 400 million by the end of the century. Which should significantly influence how one thinks about the causality levels when considering today's >740 million.

Not to mention all the conflicts outside of Europe (many including European powers). The Dungan "Revolt" and Miao Rebellion were some of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. It was an especially bloody century for China.

I'm not sure I'd say that Congress of Vienna achieved lasting peace and I think we both know that either side of that argument can be argued. Especially on the distinction of how you consider peace (people killing one another or conflicts between nations?) and locality (conflicts between European powers on European soil or conflicts involving European powers outside Europe?). Either way, the body count is very high.

Independently, the Napoleonic Wars, (and outside Europe) Red Turban Rebellion, Mfecane, Miao Rebellion, Dungan Revolt, and Taping Rebellion have higher death tolls than all of the global conflicts since 2000[0]. These numbers aren't even normalized to population change[1]. So while maybe not as bloody (in Europe) as the 18th century, I'd still claim it was extremely bloody in the relative sense (which was my point)

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace?insight=conflict-de...

[1] Recognizing that world populations were 1bn in 1800, 1.2bn in 1850, 1.6bn in 1900, 6.1bn in 2000, and 8bn today. This represents a monumential shift and should significantly affect how one interprets casualty numbers.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-populat...

[p1esk]

2024 is not peaceful.

[godelski]

No one claimed 2024 was peaceful. Nor that any time is. The statement was

  ***relatively*** peaceful our time is

Relatively is an important qualifying word here. Qualifiers are important words that can dramatically change the meaning of sentences and can easily be missed. I think you have missed this specific case.

[p1esk]

2024 is not *relatively* peaceful.

[dieselgate]

Pretty crazy how that’s not even 1k years ago. Humans have been the same for like, at least dozens of thousands of years? Maybe even more?

[temp0826]

Homo sapiens (with the exact hardware that we carry today) emerged ~300k years ago. Wikipedia says-

"Humans began exhibiting behavioral modernity about 160,000–70,000 years ago, and possibly earlier."

[datameta]

I think modern hardware would be more like 200k, no? I believe 300k is robust/archaic Homo sapiens.

[ethbr1]

> It's sometimes forgotten that 13th century humans were the same as us.

Ceiling is probably closer than median.

One of the crowning achievements of the modern area has been to more broadly extend knowledge and prosperity (both globally and within countries).

We still have a looong way to go, but it's important not to forget what 'median education' looked like in the 1200s.

[gklitz]

What a strange perspective, the oil reserves aren’t located anywhere near the “barren remote” parts of Norway, consider the famous ekofisk oil field, it’s in the ocean roughly in the middle between Denmark England and Norway. And the southern Coast of Norway isn’t dramatically different from Denmark climate wise, they do have amazing cliffs there though and the culture around boating to town is a sharp contrast to Denmark. Anyways, hardly a rough barren wasteland with dreadful weather as described.

This discovery is at Fen which is much more north, but it’s near a fjord, and a skiing resort. It’s hardly some uninhabitable place. It’s true Norway stretches very far north and some parts are not inhabited, but that’s not anywhere near where the resources that have provided the Norwegian wealth are, and not this time either.

Now if you want to dive into the true reason for their wealth it’s a cultural thing, when the negotiations around ekofisk took place they famously got the Danish foreign minister of the day, Per Hækkerup so drunk while he visited Oslo that he agreed to pretty much just give them all the oil. Ever since Danes lost all respect for him, not for giving up the oil, but for not being able to hold his liquor. This last part is of cause all hyperbol, part myth part joke, but many did believe that he just gave it up to easily because no one expected this amount of oil off the coast of Norway.

[fuglede_]

Said myth being debunked: https://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/myte-foraerede-haekkerup...

[bruce511]

Getting someone drunk in Noway is not cheap. Getting an oil field in exchange is about right...

[anonyfox]

> where very few people want to live

just as a sole data point: been there a few times, and my personal ideal weather _is_ cool/gray/wet with ideal outside temperature of 15C. I can withstand the cold, but find it hard to tolerate heat (as in >20C).

Purely from a weather perspective, I'd move there. What holds me back is that I also need dense urban surroundings nearby with all the buzz it brings (cyberpunk style) - norway is lacking that, including Oslo. _Too_ quiet/beautiful/peaceful for my liking.

[NegatioN]

What gets most foreigners is usually the darkness in the winter, and not the temperature fwiw.

It's hard to describe, but many people end up quite depressed.

[Broken_Hippo]

I'd just like to add:

I'm an immigrant in Norway. The darkness is enough of an issue that told us know about this in the state-funded language classes and made sure we knew help was available. I'm in Trondheim, so December is full of 4.5 hours of poor sunlight each day.

If there were something else that really gets folks, it is that Norway's people are rather reserved, to a point, and it really makes some folks lonely. This combined with the dark winters really causes some folks to struggle.

Everyone gets used to the weather and quickly learns how to dress properly enough.

[grugagag]

How are you faring so far? Can you join some groups of less reserved/more gregarious immigrants and carry on together?

[Broken_Hippo]

For me, personally: I'm fairly introverted myself and generally had only a few friends near me before I moved, so it suits me well. Also: I've been here a decade or so and I moved for marriage - I've always had at least one friend here. I've worked a little bit. And then I got into board games (both immigrants and local folks), so I meet some folks that way. The person that organizes the games, though? They struggled a bit for a while.

[dev1ycan]

I know about this from living in Lima (Peru), the weather due to our geological position is always temperate, goes from min temps of 11 degrees to like 32 in summer (top), usually around ~18/19 degrees up to like 23 throughout most of the year.

You'd think climate is great, but it's ALWAYS "foggy", you can't see a clear blue sky like in the inner regions of the country such as Cusco, it depresses you, I can't imagine it being even darker.

It's why I simply can't believe nordic "stories" about being the happiest place, I simply can't believe with all the money in the world you'd be happier than at a tropical beach with half of that money.

[331c8c71]

> you'd be happier than at a tropical beach with half of that money.

Waaay too warm and humid. And no seasons. Thanks, but no thanks.

My ideal climate is proper 4 seasons with sub-zero and snowy winters. I am pretty sure I am not the only one.

[konschubert]

Living in northernmost Germany, I can confirm.

It’s not the cold or the endless weeks of rain.

It’s the days that barely feel like daylight.

[mattpallissard]

Living in Alaska I struggle more with the endless daylight than the short dark days. It messes with my sleep too much.

[dylan604]

There's ways to black out windows and darken rooms to counter all of that daylight, but when it's dark it's really hard to counter that when going outside.

Without actually personally experiencing it, I think I would have the opposite struggle. If it were dark for that long without clouds so I could have all of that extra time to view the sky I think it would be a much different situation though.

[grugagag]

Have locals adapted to this or they’re generally more depressive over the winter months?

[foobarian]

It's actually surprising how north the famous EU countries are. Already south France and Italy are about the same latitude as New England; Norway must be like Alaska as far as daylight goes. If it weren't for the warm Atlantic current the place would be a glacier.

[jackcosgrove]

In the northern hemisphere the prevailing winds come from the west, which is why west coasts are more moderate than east coasts. Winds coming from the ocean are more moderate than winds coming from the interior of a continent.

This is why New York is on the same latitude as Lisbon yet is much colder. Same for Tokyo and San Francisco.

Western Europe is about as far north as people can live in large numbers.

[input_sh]

The example that blew my mind once and I've been repeating it since: New York is as north as Madrid. Like, almost exactly, 0.3 degrees difference (or 20 miles, or 33 kilometres).

[VBprogrammer]

London is further north than St John's Newfoundland.

[coob]

His bless His Majesty’s Gulf Stream.

[NLips]

The entirety of Great Britain is farther north than the entirety of the contiguous 48 USA states.

[ethbr1]

So that's why they held onto Canada...

[snowpid]

The south of Alaska starts in Northern Germany.

[mnsc]

Living in Northern Sweden with "midnight sun", what gets me the most the few times I've been approaching the equator is warm nights that are pitch dark. So strange! And then I remember that this is the experience of the majority of the world. :D

[novaRom]

> my personal ideal weather _is_ cool/gray/wet with ideal outside temperature of 15C

15C day temps? morning/night temps can be much lower. Winters in Norway are much colder. If you are looking for stable day-night temps year around in that range, then there is no such place in Europe, well maybe except Ireland?

[mrspuratic]

June-Sept in most places in Ireland has a mean daily temp of around 15C, and around 6C winter time. It infrequently gets much above 20C, or much below 0C year round. 5 consecutive days of 25C is the meteorological definition of "heatwave".

As a predominantly temperate maritime/oceanic climate it's unpredictable and erratic, from 15C mid-winter days to 4C mid-summer nights :/

Plenty of grey and wet though.

[anonyfox]

no, more like ideal lunch time temp, lower is okay, above 20 and I start to feel miserable. Yes very cold is also okay :-)

The only thing that sucks is hovering around 0C for a long time, since this means oscillating between frozen/mud

[baq]

Only San Francisco has San Francisco weather...

[datameta]

Well, temperature-wise mid-April SF struck me as almost exactly like CDMX in early December.

[pier25]

For me it's the food.

Norway is a beautiful country. I love cold weather and grey skies but all that fish stuff is not for me.

[vidarh]

I grew up in Norway, and I hardly eat fish, and we hardly ever had fish for dinner when I grew up.

[KingOfCoders]

When in Norway, the only thing I didn't like was that sweet, brown cheese :-)

[nkurz]

You must not have tried the "Gammelost": https://norwayathome.com/?p=319

The sweet brown "Brunost" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunost) might not be your favorite, but I doubt it haunts you in nightmares. The Gammelost though will stay pungent in your mind for years. It's been years, and I still wonder whether I was the victim of a particularly cruel practical joke.

[dagw]

The difference is the Gammelost isn't actually a thing in Norway. I grew up there and never saw it. Whereas Brunost is staple food eaten every day by a large part of the population.

[vidarh]

Im Norwegian, and I have never been in a house where anyone had Gammelost. There are people who eat it of course, but it's mostly a thing we scare foreigners with.

[Filligree]

Gammelost is just fermented cheese. No biggie.

[vidarh]

I don't eat that either. My girlfriend brought some back with us after Christmas - her first time trying Norwegian food - and it's still in my fridge...

[epolanski]

Why? Sounds odd for a country with so much sea to not have a fish culture.

Looking around the internet indeed there's very little fish in most popular Norwegian dishes, except for fish meatballs.

[dagw]

Why?

Honestly no idea. They just don't. Growing up the only fish we really ate was fish sticks and heavily processed fish cakes. When going out to restaurants I have no real memory of anybody really ordering fish. Even when I was living in down town Oslo (admittedly 20+ years ago), just getting ahold of fresh fish was hard. The only food store that had a fish mongers and sold fresh fish was the really fancy store in the most expensive part of town. There were maybe two fish stores in all of central Oslo that I knew of, one of which was a high end luxury food sort of place that also sold fancy caviar, foie gras and oysters. Compared to basically any costal town anywhere in Europe where fresh fish is plentiful and ubiquitous, it is really strange.

[epolanski]

I am so confused though.

Some data says Norway is the second country in the world by amount of fish eaten [1][2]

[1]https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-upda...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_seafood_c...

[vidarh]

There are fishing boats selling fish in Oslo harbour... Though a lot of it is probably more for tourists.

But it's more common on the West Coast, I think. Even people in Oslo get impressed by the (rather small) Bergen fish market.

Then again I've never willingly gone looking for fish other than smoked salmon anywhere.

[j7ake]

Actually Norwegian food is mostly a thick slice of buttered bread and a thin slice of cheese or meat.

If feeling luxurious, then maybe both meat and cheese on bread.

[dagw]

What fish stuff? I grew up in Norway and lived there for a chunk of my adult life, and honestly Norwegians (at leats in/around Oslo) seem to eat less fish than most other European countries I've been to.

[boringg]

I think globally norway cuisine is identified with cured or other fish etc. thats probably not what the local diet really eats probsbly (based on two comments in this thread)

[foobarian]

Cured fish is fine, it's the fermented fish that I draw the line on :-)

[boringg]

Thats right! Fermented not cured ;)

[jonasdegendt]

Norway also has a weekly tradition called "Taco Friday" that a decent amount of people participate in, so it's safe to say that generalizing food habits doesn't really work anymore nowadays.

[mywittyname]

Why not Taco Tuesday?

(I ask with all seriousness; I'm kind of hoping the answer is interesting)

[jackothy]

I grew up in Norway. The way I see it is that weekends are for spoiling yourself with the most delicious food. Another common tradition would be making pizza on weekends. Taco Friday is seen as a special weekend treat.

I know taco and pizza aren't really that special or fancy meals, but I guess they turned out that way in Norway since they came from abroad. They're still not seen as "fancy", but they are many people's favorite tastiest food.

[KingOfCoders]

"The thing about Norway is that it’s a cold, barren, remote place where very few people want to live."

We walked 700km through Norway in the summer, from Oslo to Trondheim (the South were most people live). The country was sunny and warm, it seldom rained, people were exceptionally friendly, and it had the best wild strawberries and raspberries I ever ate. The Dovrefjell was the only very cold place. We'll might move there in the future.

[Someone]

> We walked 700km through Norway in the summer

“in the summer” must have helped. In the depth of winter, there’s less than 6 hours between sunrise and sunset in Oslo (https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/norway/oslo?month=12), just over 4 1/2 in Trondheim (https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/norway/trondheim?month=12).

To make matters worse, the sun doesn’t get high in the sky.

[NorwegianDude]

There is not much sun in the winter, but that also means there is more sun in summer. The variance is greater, but it averages out.

[Toutouxc]

The country lies north of the Northern Tropic, which means that it gets less sun in summer AND significantly less sun in winter.

[NorwegianDude]

Ehh, what?

Just because Norway is far north does not mean that it gets less sun all year round. It has more sun in summer, and less in winter.

You can be at the northern most point of mainland Norway now and wait for sunset. But you will have to wait until August. It's been up since May 11.

[Toutouxc]

I wrote that in a rush and was thinking more about the angle, i.e. peak intensity. You get more sun hours, but not that warm.

[ithkuil]

Less sun intensity but longer days during summer

[bongodongobob]

It's summer for like a month. Living that far north is hellish for most people. It's not just like a colder Seattle or something.

[zrules]

I find the best arrangement is spending a month or at least two weeks in Norway during the summer. I prefer to stay around Stryn. You can do some what I consider good drive outings in every direction. Because the day is longer it’s perfect for going into rabbit holes, hacking something together to explore new tech and just plan out what’s next. The scenery and the very friendly folks helps too. Only tough thing right now is it’s hard to find things to do for kids. I have not found a summer camp for non-Norwegian speaking kids. This definitely limits how much hacking is done.

[ajmurmann]

> The result is that its natural resources haven’t been consumed to the degree that most developed countries’ resources have, and there aren’t as many people to consume them.

I find this a strange train of thought in this context of rare metals like this. Did other countries truly discover their Neodymium reserves decades or centuries ago and exhaust them back then or did they never have them in the first place?

[Loughla]

I'm with you. What were people in the early 1900's using rare earth metals for that they would be used up by now?

[adrian_b]

The first large-scale use of the rare-earth metals was since the last decade of the 19th century in gas lamps with high brightness, which were used especially for street lighting in Europe, until they were replaced by electric lamps.

The next large-scale use appeared soon after the start of the 20th century, in the portable lighters, which are still used today.

[tyfon]

Being born in Norway and living here (on a remote island with only ferry connection as well), I personally wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

There are areas where it is cold and barren, but not the cost.

Writing this on the ferry on the way home from work :)

[fwsgonzo]

I live on a remote island too, but it has a bridge! Same feeling: Wouldn't want to live anywhere else!

[eschulz]

That sounds cool (no pun intended)

[skilled]

The weather in Norway sucks big time. In some parts of the country it is really bad, especially if you live near the sea. Summer isn’t guaranteed either. That’s a pretty big price to pay for an otherwise great country with really chill people.

[dehrmann]

I remember Swedes telling me summer is the nicest week of the year.

[elygre]

20c/68f outside in Oslo, at 5pm today. High of 27c/80f in may. I’m satisfied.

[Turing_Machine]

> The weather in Norway sucks big time.

Seems like a matter of taste, but then I live in Alaska. :-)

Edit: right now it's 50 degrees F and misty. Perfect, as far as I'm concerned.

[epolanski]

Of course it's a matter of taste, but statistically humans prefer warmer climates.

[antisthenes]

> The thing about Norway is that it’s a cold, barren, remote place where very few people want to live. Most of the year it’s cold and gray, and most of the country is uninhabitable.

It would be true if the Gulfstream did not exist. But it's not.

[veqz]

Eh, don't know about that... We're really just like anyone else, we've just ended up with a fairly decent political environment by the time we found oil, specifically.

We've been pretty good at mining out our copper ores and everything else that we knew of that had value; we've built a whole bunch of hydro plants and have dammed up numerous valleys; no one thought there was oil in the North Sea or that it was valuable enough to get it up, but now we have a pretty extensive petroleum industry, and it barely took five decades since the first oil was discovered.

What resources we have been good with, however, is fish. But that's just proper regulation over the last century or so.

As for our friendly neighbours... Norway was ruled by Denmark for 400 years and we've been part of all their wars, for a start. Our national anthem has 8 verses, 6 of them are about how we killed Swedes, Danes and Scots.

And we'd like Jamtland, Herjedalen, and all the islands in the Atlantic back, thankyouverymuch!

[JumpCrisscross]

> result is that its natural resources haven’t been consumed to the degree that most developed countries’ resources have

This also describes Saudi Arabia.

[MisterBastahrd]

The thing about money is that people will chase it regardless of the weather conditions if they can make enough of it. The folks out there in the Gulf of Mexico who spend 16 hour days working on oil rigs aren't there because it's fun.

[Moldoteck]

You say that like norway can't and didn't sell a lot of these resources

[b112]

That, and the heroes that risked life and limb to start those first oil rigs, many dying, so a poor country could use the wealth to help its own people.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Norway has been relatively wealthy since 1870...

[samastur]

What the hell are you talking about?

I've been to Norway 4-5 times and will visit again in about a month. It's wonderful throughout and wish we could live there.

[dikaio]

I for one would love to live in Norway.