Posts Tagged Norway
Sale of sausages set to increase
Posted by admin in Food and drink, Nature and the great outdoors on June 26, 2010
Norway beat Brazil in the World Cup
Posted by admin in Photos and videos, Sport on June 25, 2010
Back in 1998 
Footage of that match in Marseille, France, when Norway famously beat Brazil 2-1 after a penalty by Kjetil Rekdal put them in the lead.
About Norwegian football
Football fever is upon us, and regardless of what team you support, it seems football is the conversation topic of choice just now (or should that be the ‘only’ conversation topic?). Anyway… Norway’s not in the World Cup this year, but here a few footie facts you might or might not know about this country:
- The Norwegian national football team played its first international in 1908. Its home ground is Ullevaal Stadion in Oslo. Norway took part in the FIFA World Cup three times in its history, in 1938, 1994 and 1998. They only played in the European Championship once, in 2000.
- The national team’s hour of glory was their beating Brazil in the 1998 World Cup in Marseille, France, after Kjetil Rekdal fired a decisive penalty into the back of the net. They proceeded to the second round, but lost their first match (against Italy) and went out of the competition.
- There are a total of 1,800 football clubs in Norway (amateur and professional), with over 280,000 players.
- Norwegian players to have achieved a degree of fame abroad include John Arne Riise, a Liverpool player for several years before he moved on to play in Italy, Ole Gunnar Solskjær (known as Manchester United’s ‘baby-faced assassin’) and Tore André Flo, who played for Chelsea, among other clubs.
- The Norwegian Premier League (unofficially known as the Eliteserien) is the top competition in Norway.
- Most successful Norwegian clubs in recent years include Brann (Bergen), who won in 2007; Stabæk (Bærum), who came top in 2008; and Rosenborg (Trondheim) who accumulated an impressive 13 consecutive titles between 1992-2004, and also got gold in 2006 and 2009.
- Women football is big in Norway, with some 110,000 registered members. There are 12 clubs playing in the top division, and 12 in the first division.
- Norway hosts the world’s largest football tournament for children and young people, the Norway Cup, every year in August. The tournament, which dates back to 1972, is hugely popular – in 2009 it attracted some 30,000 participants, with 1,371 teams from 49 countries.
Famous locals: Hans Nielsen Hauge
Posted by admin in History and architecture on June 24, 2010
Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824) was a lay preacher who created the largest religious mass movement in Norwegian history. He was born on a farm in Tune, near Sarpsborg, Østfold, and it was in a nearby field that, on 5 April 1796, he had a profound religious experience, ‘a spiritual meeting with God’, that was to influence him throughout the rest of his life.
Hauge started preaching the gospel, a radical move as lay preaching was illegal in those days. He was imprisoned for the first time in Fredrikstad in 1797. He was released just a few weeks later, but in 1804 he was put to jail again, and he spent most of the next decade behind bars. By that time he had developed a lay religious movement with branches all over Norway and had therefore become a force to reckon with.
Unlike many lay religious preachers, Hauge called on his followers to take active part in society and not withdraw from it in puritanical fashion. He helped establish several businesses, and he also inspired his followers to share material goods according to their needs. One of Hauge’s aims in getting the movement involved in various businesses was to create wealth to break the business monopoly of the rich, and thus stop their exploitation of the poor.
He empowered ordinary Norwegians by making them more independent in religious matters, and by inspiring them to look after each other, he also helped to create a new social awareness, and political interest. A central ambition was to make sure that ordinary people should not have to beg or suffer from hunger and that everybody should have work. This is the reasoning behind Hauge’s endeavours to establish industry and trade for his followers.
Hauge died 29 March 1824 and was buried at Old Aker Cemetery in Oslo. In the decades after his death many kinds of organizations were formed for the first time among common folk in Norway, and Hauge was undoubtedly a decisive impulse behind this social and politically important development.
You can visit the Hans Nielsen Hauges Minne at Hans Nielsen Hauges vei 39, Rolvsøy, between Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg. Tel: 91 35 65 61 (no website, but they do have a page on facebook). Open May to Aug.
Made in Norway: Norwegian Architecture Today
Posted by admin in History and architecture on June 17, 2010
A great read for anyone interested in Norwegian architecture! Published by the National Association of Norwegian Architects (NAL), this brand new book presents some of the most exciting examples of Norwegian architecture of recent years. From private houses to community projects such as schools, museums and even a convent (!), to new Norwegian icons like Oslo’s stunning Opera House, the book features some 30 buildings up and down the country, and even a couple further afield (like the Norwegian pavilion built for the Shanghai World Exhibition). Inspiration for your next trip to Norway no doubt, whether you decide to stay at the Preikestolen Mountain Lodge, visit the Hamsun Centre, or just wander along some of the new national tourist roads. My personal favourites? The new headquarters for Gyldendal Publishers in Oslo (designed by Sverre Fehn) and the Inside Out Summerhouse in Hvaler.
Made in Norway: Norwegian Architecture Today (paperback) 144 pages, ISBN: 978-3-0346-0559-5. Language: English. Published by Birkhauser on behalf of the NAL. Price: 285Kr. By mail order at anp@arkitektur.no, or from amazon.com
More info on the National Tourist Roads Project at http://www.elusivemoose.eu/2010/04/27/
More info on the Inside Out Summerhouse on Hvaler at http://www.elusivemoose.eu/2009/11/20/
A common summer visitor
Posted by admin in Nature and the great outdoors, Photos and videos on June 16, 2010
Did you know? A few facts about dragonflies
Posted by admin in Nature and the great outdoors on June 16, 2010
Dragonflies (øyenstikker in Norwegian) are insects that live by lakes, ponds, streams, dams and wetlands (their larvae, known as ‘nymphs’, are aquatic). Adult dragonflies are often brightly coloured and have a long slim abdomen. They also have two pairs of long, slender transparent wings covered in net-like veins. The wings do not fold and are held outstretched when at rest.
There are 5,000 different species worldwide, and 45 different kinds of dragonflies in Norway – 39 of which you can find in the Halden municipality. Many of them are quite rare, and three are protected in Norway, because their habitat is threatened: these are the Dark Whiteface (Leucorrhinia albifrons), the Bulbous White-faced Darter (Leucorrhinia caudalis) and the Yellow-Spotted Whiteface (Leucorrhinia pectoralis).
In most cultures dragonflies have been objects of superstition, and European folklore is no exception. Different names referring to dragonflies as the devil occur in several languages, although it is worth noting they have also been connected with love and young women (the original fairies). An old Swedish name for dragonfly is blindsticka (‘blind stinger’) – it came from the belief that a dragonfly could pick out your eyes. In Norway, on the other hand, it was thought that the dragonfly could sew together your eyelids – hence the word øyenstikker.
