Living in Norway

Amazon.com
If you're off to the land of fjords and plan on settling in rather than playing tourist, Living in Norway is an essential information source. Completely revised at the end of 1999, it will smooth the transition whether you intend to stay for a week or a lifetime. The book opens with extensive checklists to remind you of all the most important details when entering or leaving the country. Your car, insurance status, paperwork, health and bank records, and more--all can make your life easy or frustratingly complicated, depending on your preparation. There are 48 chapters in all covering transportation, climate, crime and police, consumer goods, retirement, and pretty much anything else you could think of to ask a native. How do you ask for the eel special, or anything but the eels? How can you forward mail? Is that deafening alarm an air raid or just a test? It's all here, but if you want greater depth on a topic, there's plenty of pointers to online and printed resources, as well. A short but very helpful glossary of common Norwegian service names fills the yellow pages in the back. Well indexed, cleverly organized, and comprehensive, Living in Norway is a priceless treasure for the nouveau Norsk. --Rob Lightner

Book Description
Patricia Bjaaland's classic "Living in Norway" (ISBN 82-990990-0-5), last published in the second edition of 1988, has been out of print since 1990. With more than 800 topics in 32 chapters, this completely new third edition by Michael Brady and Belinda Drabble is the essential A-Z sourcebook for moving to, settling and living in Norway, the small, northern country that now is one of the most dynamic and wealthiest in Europe.

From the Publisher
Amazon.com still lists the second edition by Patricia Bjaaland as available on order from used book shops. When the third edition by Brady and Drabble appears (publication is scheduled in October 1998), it will replace the second edition. Until then, the book may be listed under two ISBN numbers.

From the Author
Visitors, tourists and Norwegians abroad will also enjoy its thorough detailing of the facts of the country.

Excerpted from Living in Norway by Belinda Drabble, Michael Brady. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
As elsewhere in Europe, the popularity of American culture - principally films, TV shows and pop music - is viewed with mixed feelings. Skeptics fear that it may erode the native culture. Yet many imitate it: country and western music has been popular since the days of Hank Williams and Jim Reeves, there is a national Elvis impersonator contest and Norwegian-made serial "soap operas" are among the most popular of prime-time TV shows. In a mid 1990s survey that ranked young people in Europe in terms of an "Americanization index", Norway was on top, followed by Switzerland and Sweden, and far above Italy and France. Nonetheless, other social aspects outweigh the culture of the young in reflecting the extent of Americanization of the country. The overall urban living pattern is perhaps the most obvious. Throughout Europe, the status of the inner cities is increasing. Paris is the best example: fully 95% of the population with the highest incomes live in the central parts of the city. The trend is similar elsewhere - Berlin, London, Rome - a wealthy city surrounded by less well-off areas. But in Norway the trend is more toward the suburbs, as in the USA. Baerum, the adjoining municipality southwest of Oslo, has a higher average per-capita income than the city. Likewise, better roads are being built to serve the suburbs, as in the USA. The underlying causes may lie in the histories of cities. In 1800, London was a city of more than a million, and other cities in Europe were populous well before 20th century technologies changed cities. In Norway, as in the USA, urban concentrations of population are more recent, and nostalgia for country life correspondingly stronger than elsewhere in Europe. Roots may underlie all the trends. The population of Norway now is about 4.3 million, including all residents of foreign extraction. The Norwegian-American population of the USA now is some 3.9 million. In short, there are almost as many persons of Norwegian heritage in the USA as there are in Norway.


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