r/Norway • u/[deleted] • 6d ago

Working in Norway Etiquette? Common courtesy?

This may offend people and get down voted. It is what it is. Do Norwegians not learn common courtesy or street etiquette when they are kids? For real. So sick of this. Always stopping and standing in the middle of an aisle or sidewalk to talk, fix a bag, etc. Don't care about the people behind you. When they're walking down a sidewalk, they just walk in the middle, on the wrong side, walk 2 or 3 abreast, not caring about people walking towards you. Don't let other people off public transport before you push your way on. The last straw was tonight when I was at Meny, and a lady didn't even let me finish my order before she was pushing her way into my self checkout. I go to grab my receipt with my barcode to get out, she looks at me and goes "Ja". You guys don't give a shit about anyone but yourself, for real. This needs to be said

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u/PeStLevel 6d ago

Well, you won't be able to check and nothing I write here will convince you, but it is interesting you feel defensive about this. I have another question: Why do most Norwegians feel personally attacked when someone criticises their country/culture? What is the defensiveness about? Implicit guilt? An inferiority complex? Having been brainwashed by propaganda so much that anything contradicting it is just breaking your set of beliefs?

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u/Superb-Astronaut-371 6d ago

Imagine having a different perception of the country you grew up in, huh?

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u/PeStLevel 6d ago

I don't know what you mean. Plenty places in the world people will agree with visitors/immigrants on what is good or bad about the place. I speak fluent Norwegian and have many well-educated Norwegian friends, but for some reason they really don't like to hear what is not okay here. There are many good things here, but why is it so hard to hear that some things are not up to par?

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u/BradleyEchoes 5d ago

We are told that «det er typisk norsk å være god», every time some statistic says Norway is the best it gets a lot of media coverage, and of course there’s an inferiority complex at play. Any time any foreigner or foreign news media are talking about Norway it gets media coverage:

A perfect example of what you’re saying is the Finnish «influencer» Sanna Sarromaa - I think she really loves riling up Norwegians, but for the most part she has good points when she writes about problems in Norway - however she will always receive a lot of criticism from us Norwegians no matter how on point she is