One of the main reasons that Norway can continue to afford such a high standard of living is due to the massive oil reserves recently found in the North Sea, which make the country the third-largest oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. Rather than allow Phillips Petroleum to explore for oil in the North Sea and reap any profits to be made, the Norwegian government set up its own company, Statoil. The revenues go into an oljefond (oil fund) to support the government, thereby indirectly subsidizing the rising costs of this welfare system.
“Norway is rich not only because of Statoil,” said Knut, an art curator in Trondheim, “but also because as a country we’ve made a decision to share our resources with each other, like Sweden and Finland. We’re founded on a fusion between social solidarity and a democratic ideal. Therefore we don’t have the poor like you do in the United States—or the crime, for that matter.” Norway does have one of the lowest murder rates in the world, in spite of 720,000 registered firearms. And unlocked bikes are everywhere around town, although Arne warned us that this could still be risky. “You best keep bikes locked. Even Norwegians have learned to steal!”
Being thrown in the clink in Norway isn’t all bad, though, with a government like Norway’s picking up the bill. “See that?” a cab driver asked me, pointing to a building painted in soft Scandinavian colors. It looked like a fenced-in industrial park. “That’s Norway’s second-largest jail, but it’s really more like a hotel. They each have their own room with TVs and Internet access. Some have even studied to become lawyers while they are in jail, and the Norwegian government pays for everything. It’s better to be a prisoner in a Norwegian jail than free in Albania or Belarus.” He blamed foreigners for filling the jails, claiming that only ten percent of the prisoners were Norwegian. However, it’s clear that the population of Norway would actually decline without these arrivals. Helping immigrants resettle and aiding new families with the high cost of having children are both efforts by the government to bolster the population and to avoid the negative birth rates of Italy, France, and other European countries—along with the resulting decline in a productive populace.
In order to get by on a student stipend in Norway (short of doing time in a supposedly luxurious jail), Arild recommended, “You need to go on the meat bus to Sweden. Because meat is so expensive, Swedish stores pay for a bus to bring Norwegian pensioners, especially little old ladies, over the border to do their shopping.” It’s practically a tradition in Norway to evade high prices and taxes by shopping in Sweden, he explained. Less than three percent of the land is arable in Norway, making food prices, except for fish, some of the highest in Europe; Sweden’s prices, meanwhile, are slightly lower to be more on par with its fellow European Union countries.
We spotted the line of senior citizens waiting for the meat bus on a picturesque main street of Trondheim, with the medieval Nidaros cathedral at one end and the fishing boats on the fjord on the other. When an unmarked bus pulled up and the ladies hurriedly piled into both the front and rear doors, we followed suit, after confirming with the driver that this was the bus to Sweden. “Ya, ya. Please enter,” he replied impatiently, as if resigned to his lot in life. Once the bus was full, everyone pulled out either cinnamon rolls or knitting needles and began to chat. A woman in front of us managed to eat a sandwich, knit an entire sock, and carry on a conversation simultaneously, telling us about her relatives in Richfield (“Do you know them?”) when she discovered we were from Minnesota.
Two other women, a sandwich-toting chatterbox and a meticulously dressed knitter, took us under their wing after I explained that we need to shop in Sweden because my wife is pregnant. “Oh yes, we can tell. She must eat.” They assured us that the Swedish storekeepers understand Norwegian. But do they take Norsk money? “Oh ya!” They asked us if we had ordered our wine or alcohol ahead of time. “No? Here’s the phone number for next time.”
After we drove through a tunnel outside the fjord town of Hell, we passed more moose-crossing signs than we could count. This seemed to put the bus driver in a good mood. He began telling jokes and doing moose impersonations over the microphone, all the while steering the bus around hairpin mountain turns. The ladies put down their knitting to laugh in unison. After two hours on a one-lane road, the bus pulled up to a rinky-dink grocery store at a desolate crossroads. The calm courtesy evaporated and a mad rush for shopping carts ensued; surprised shopkeepers backed away as the ladies stormed the store.
We lost sight of our two helpers in the chaos and were left to fend for ourselves. A butcher brought out a box of two-foot salamis and was surrounded like a quarterback in a football huddle. Ladies emptied the box before he could get the salamis into the refrigerator ca
se. One of our friends emerged from the huddle. Spying us, she hoisted her salami like a trophy and yelled, “Kjøtt!” (meat).