Beautiful, independent Norway

It is easy to like Norway.  There is a lot of open space, even in cities like Oslo and Bergen.  The people are polite.  The place is clean.  There are a lot of interesting sights such as narrow, long, and deep fjords, snow capped mountains even in the height of summer, and fairly-accessible glaciers.


There are still quite a few quaint little houses with grass growing on the roof.  I was told that the grass was supposed to help to keep the house warm.  But the practice is disappearing.


The people are amazingly independent.  A lot of them still live in isolated, small houses high on the mountains, or deep inside fjords.  Many are unreachable by road, and accessible only by boat.  It is not easy living there even in summer, and almost unimaginable deep in winter.  One must be stubbornly self-sufficient to be able to live in such places. 


Perhaps that’s part of the reason why they can achieve so much with so few people.  Of course, having discovered a tremendous amount of oil offshore under the North Sea helps a lot.