Here I list a series of facts and societal observations about the differences between the United States and Norway and how we as Americans may benefit from a spectacular country and culture. Enjoy!
Nice video. I was an exchange student to Norway when I was a teen in the early 1980s and loved it. I was in a small town near Oslo, but visited Bergen on my next visit after college. It's certainly a beautiful country, with a very social culture. I'm from up the road from you between Harrisburg and Hershey. It's great that you were so helpful to those folks and were able to give them a more authentic visit to our area, especially with your unique background. :-)
I'm Greek, now living in Bergen for a while.. The contrast between both countries is unimaginable. I own a restaurant in Athens and wanted to open one here, as well, but the alcohol rules and taxes on it, kind of make it hard. I brew my own beer and sell it in my restaurant, which isn't very popular here, and expensive. It's good that the country is trying to control the alcoholism among the population but it also brings some negative sides. People heavily drink at home, often illegal, bad quality, sometimes very questionable alcohol, simply because they can't easily afford the alcohol from the Vinmonopolet ... The name itself is scary. EDIT: And before people jump in and start shouting that Norwegians don't have problem buying expensive alcohol because of their high salaries and excellent quality of life.... well that is not true. A lot of Norwegians struggle just like everybody else.
As a Norwegian also from Bergen, i have always said that Norway is never going to get a drinking culture with the strict laws. It's like a pressure to drink the most before going out paying 100+ kr for a 0,4 beer. It's a race against the clock to drink the most it seems. Remember back in the 90s when they had night open stores sometimes before xmas and stuff, the pubs also was allowed to be open all the night, you didn't get the taxi lines, the food lines, almost no fighting and people didn't come to town drunk. The pressure was off, it's strange that the politicians don't see this.
All your observations are spot on. (I'm Norwegian). I used to travel "to the Med" (including the lovely Greek islands) for summer holidays but I can't afford it anymore...
Taxation to control the public is never a good thing. It's basically, in a manner of speaking, outlawing something through taxation except for those who have a lot of money.
By firearms per capita Norway is actually 17th in the world, with 28.8 per 100 citizen. But, the US has double the number of firearms per capita compared to 2nd place on the list, with 120.5 per 100 capita. So I would not say that we don't have firearms, it's just that the amount of firearms in the US is excessive. Also, firearms in Norway is regulated, you don't buy firearms for self defense, you buy firearms for hunting or sports shooting, and thus also need a special permit for a special use case and type of firearms, and you are required to be member of a hunting team or shooting club for some types of weapons. And you also need to take a course before you can hunt or buy many types of firearms.
There's an idiom in the English language: No one made you king. You don't get to decide what excessive is. Hunting and sport are good, perfectly valid reasons for owning arms but are not the most important reasons. Self defense is the most important reason while the other two are enjoyable for people in those pursuits, but they aren't necessary except for those in live in remote parts of Alaska where the expense of food makes it necessary for many families to hunt. The rest of us have ready access to grocery stores.
@@Anon54387 And you don't get to decide what I perceive as excessive. I know all the excuses you have, the so called need for self defense. So safe does these guns make you, that you are statistically more likely to die by firearms in the US than the middle east, Africa, Russia, in fact, just about every single nation in the world but Brazil. Your guns make you so safe that you have metal detectors in your schools, and children learn how to behave in case of a shooting incident. Yeah, safety, protection... But sure, it's not the guns that kills. Well, I guess you're statistically just a nation of shooters then... Maniacs... Would you really arm a nation of maniacs?
I like the calm objectivity of this video. It seems that in some ways going to Norway would be like going back in time in the US, in terms of people being offline and enjoying each other as opposed to only thinking about themselves. In this way that Norwegians focus on each other, it seems like a happier paradigm. The notion that the people who live in Bergen, or otherwise Norway don't own guns is uplifting as well. Thanks for making this video. :)
Many Norwegians own guns for proper purposes. They are generally handled responsibly and appropriately. Our police have no need to routinely carry guns. The US has never remotely resembled Norway.
@@anushkasekkingstad1300 Firearms in the USA are generally handled responsibly and appropriately. The low estimate on ownership in the USA is 80 million people, but most likely is higher since we don't actually register them (unless you count some backdoor registries that my state has as well as that the ATF gets records of sales when a shop closes its doors, but that's another topic). Out of those 80 million we have 14k homicides and accidents only in the hundreds. The VAST majority of us are neither violent nor careless with firearms. Moreover, of those 14k homicides most of those are committed by people in states and municipalities that are bad about letting those who are violent out of prison or refusing to prosecute violent criminals in the first place. That's what needs to change, we need to start keeping violent people in prison, we do not need more controls. We've too many as it is.
@@Anon54387 According to your own CDC, the figures you claim are a nonsense. That guns aren’t even registered is neither responsible nor appropriate. That the ‘vast majority” might not be violent nor careless with their guns is very far from good enough. Your legal system and your prison system are as dysfunctional and as corrupt as your failed healthcare system and your failed general education system. Violent prisoners should be freed from incarceration once they have served their sentence. Unfortunately, your prison system is designed to dehumanise your almost 3 million prisoners and break their ties to the community. No attempt is made to rehabilitate. It is no wonder people leave your prisons more angry and dysfunctional than when they went in. Your 5 year recidivism rate is many times that of Norway where rehabilitation is the key function of our prison system. Ex prisoners have little difference here in being accepted back into the community. They commonly still have their family links in place and are readily employed into well paying careers. My wife is Swiss born and there are a very large number of guns in Switzerland. Their annual homicides number in the mid 20’s. You have around 1,000 times more gun homicides than they have total homicides. There are very few controls on firearms in the deeply dysfunctional U.S.
@@anushkasekkingstad1300 Ummm... There are parts of the US that very much resembled Norway and the other Scandinavian countries, just not so much recently. The Upper Midwest (Minnesota, North & South Dakota) was largely settled by immigrants from those countries. And there's still a large Nordic population in Washington State, especially near Seattle.
@@pamelabennett9057 There are parts of New Zealand, Scotland and Canada in which the landscape strongly resembles areas of Norway. Unlike in the US, my family feels both welcome and comfortable in those countries, to the extent that we haven’t set foot in the US since 2015 and have no interest in ever returning. I fully understand why large scale migration from Norway took place in the 19th century. I can equally understand why the descendants of those migrants would deeply regret their ancestors’ decision.
Yeah, whatever, You guys speak English watch American movies, listen to American music wear American clothes etc. etc. America's main export to Europe is culture.
@@robertdownes793 I speak several languages, including English in a form unrelated to that of the US. In Norway, I speak Norwegian. I avoid US films, much preferring those from Europe. I’m no fan of US music and most certainly would never wear US clothes. Amusing that you might describe anything exported from the US as culture. Along with my family, I have long boycotted US products and businesses and wouldn’t even buy a paper clip from them. Our last visit to the US was in 2015, when we closed my mother’s production facility and moved production just across the border into Canada. We have no plans to return to visit the US.
