NORWAY I

Due to only five million inhabitants,  a lot of media in Norway doesn’t get translated into Norwegian. Therefor the overall English level is very high even within young children and older generations. As a result, one does not require to speak any Norwegian to deal with the everyday life. However, I still decided to sign up for a ten weeks short course in Norwegian, to learn at least the basics. I think it is the most important step when moving to a foreign country, to understand simple sentences and to be able to read certain signs in the country´s language.  
With German as my mother language, I had a big advantage in learning Norwegian. Both languages have the same roots, meaning that they have a similar sentence structure as well as a lot of similar words. Therefor it was quite easy for me to read Norwegian and understand about 30% without any knowledge of the language.

However, being able to follow any conversation in Norwegian proved to be more of a hassle. In addition, all Norwegians I met, told me that the Trondheim dialect was one of the toughest to understand in Norway. Sin-ce I lived with about 10 Norwegians in my flat, I was constantly surroun-ded by the Norwegian language. In combination with the short course in Norwegian, I was able to decipher more and more words when listening to their conversations. Learning a lot of new vocabulary every week was also a good help to do grocery shopping and being able to answer the cashier without having to use Norwegian.
Furthermore, it happened every now and then, that I was approached to in Norwegian since my looks (blond hair and green eyes) could have just been of a Norwegian girl as well. Mostly this happened while going out in Trondheim since Norwegians, who are normally quite shy and not really outgoing, are completely transformed when drinking alcohol. After just a couple of drinks, they transform into talkative and open people, who will then also address strangers like me in the middle of the road. Otherwise, I have to admit that communicating with Norwegians wasn’t the easiest task. They are really friendly people however it is more polite in their culture to not disturb you or other strangers. Meaning that even in my flat which I shared with 14 other students, most of them were eating in their own rooms and barely talked to each other. Communication was only necessary for practical things such as the dish washer which wasn’t working anymore.

Going cross country skiing with the University ski team or running with the track and field team of the NTNU, was one of the best things to do, to finally meet and talk to a lot of Norwegians. Since they love sports and especially cross country skiing, they get much more social while doing it. For instance, it happened quite often, that somebody on the slopes would stop and have a talk with me about the weather, the snow or anyt-hing else. I could really sense, that Norwegians were much more outgoing while being on skis and that if you share this passion with them, they become quite sociable. One can imagine the social life of Norwegians separated into bubbles. They have a work bubble, sport bubble or any other interest they have. If you are not part of their bubble than it beco-mes really tough to become friends with them, however sharing the same interests will make everything easier.
To conclude, communicating with Norwegians is quite easy because they are really polite people. However, one has to always make the first step and it is quite difficult to make Norwegian friends as a foreigner. Since it is part of their culture to not disturb other people, for us exchange students it seemed that the Norwegian students were just really unsocial. Joining a sport club or trying to speak some Norwegian can help a lot. And still I will leave Norway with the feeling that in order to really get to know Norwegi-ans, one will have to live there for a couple of years while as an exchange students, you will most likely get to know other exchange students before having a best Norwegian friend.

Livia Herle
NTNU Trondheim
Summer semester 2020