I would be remiss if I didn't put something in about taco Fridays. In Alaska, if your neighbor chooses red, then you choose green. There is this intense American individualism and independence. Norway, on the other hand, that same intensity appears to be displayed in a degree of conformity that was new and intriguing to us. Be it house color, Sunday family events or what you eat on Friday night, they are in it together, for better for worse. Maybe it is the fact that the country has only had independence for just over a hundred years, and during that time they were occupied by Germany during WWII. I am not sure, but it continues to fascinate me that these very similar places in terms of oil, geography, and fiercely practical, resilient people have such a different view of the government and social order in general.
When I was looking for dried beans in the store (which I never found) I would find these big sections of "tex-mex" food and I thought it was just popular. However, we soon learned that Friday night is "Mexican night". That’s right- a country of only 5 million people spread out across an intense and isolated landscape all eat the same imported food every Friday night. This is a place where the landscape has kept people so far apart that there are three major dialects and 2 different formal written forms of Norwegian, yet everyone fills their carts with "Old El Paso" on the same day every week. It’s funny which things catch on in a country, but we did enjoy our taco nights!
No matter the size store, they always had this shelf, you always knew what would be in people’s carts on Friday.
While Mexican was big, the other two things we loved was the yarn in every store and Traverse and his black licorice. Every kind and variety you could think of. One last bag for the road.