I’ve been living in Norway for nearly two months now, and yet my social circle is still almost entirely devoid of Norwegians. I live in the international student dorm, and besides Norwegians are shy. Last night, however, I was invited to a fully Norwegian party. Obviously, I was thrilled. Finally, I would have the chance to observe Norwegians in their natural habitat. What are they really like?

As it turns out, a Norwegian party is pretty similar to an American one. You sit around chatting with people and drinking alcohol in a seedy student apartment. Also there’s American music on, and there are jello shots.

However, there are some important cultural differences. First, Norwegian parties are shoeless. They are wool sock affairs. It’s wonderful – the floors stay clean, and you can slide around in the kitchen when you start grooving to the music. Second, I arrived at the party at 7:20, and I was late. In the United States, you say the party starts at 10, and you feel lucky if people show up around 11. In Norway, the party starts at 7 fulls stop. What do they do with the extra four hours of partying? They talk and drink a lot more, but more slowly. One guy casually drank two bottles of wine. Another guy had 16 beers. I was not prepared for this.

Fortunately, I did know that you bring your own beer to a Norwegian party. Alcohol is too expensive to share, and so I brought several beers, imagining that the party couldn’t possibly last six hours. But it did, and it was great. We talked about all kinds of things. One guy had spent a year abroad going to a Christian high school in Northern Idaho. I think he was really excited to meet someone who understands how crazy that must have been.

I was chatting with a couple of girls, who were very close friends. They kept interrupting our conversation by shouting “Taxi! Taxi!” and then laughing uproariously. “Sorry,” said one of them, “it’s an internal joke.” I laughed for very long time about that.

Eventually, we got a cab and went into the city center, which was about 15 minutes away. It cost 302 kroner, which I now realize is just about 50 dollars. Holy shit.

Only one thing worth mentioning happened in the city center: a felt cowboy hat miraculously fell from the sky into my hands. I don’t have any sort of explanation for this, but I do have a picture of my new hat:

All in all, it was a fantastic time. Norwegians may be a little reserved, but once you get a little alcohol, they’re warm and friendly and lots of fun.

One other tidbit in the odd food category. Recently, while shopping for protein sources, I came upon a massive sale of some sort of frozen fish. The label was in Norwegian, so I couldn’t really determine what it was, but it was damn cheap so I bought some. This is what I got:

UPDATE: I later determined that it was a frozen block of pollock. I hadn't realized pollock were so rectangular.

What the hell is that?

Finally, here’s a pretty picture I took from my dorm parking lot: