So, if you’ve been keeping up with this blog you will know that I am an American gal living abroad in England.
Well, in the past few months that has changed. Now I am an American gal living abroad in Norway.
Living in Norway has been… interesting. I have adjusted pretty well to the cold weather, although I can say that with more enthusiasm now as the snow is mostly melted and the idea that spring may someday come becomes more solid each day. However, I am still coming to understand how much further abroad I now live. This move has taught me to see my time in England in a new way. Although England was ‘abroad’ and a long plane ride from the US, we still spoke a common language. British people are unique, and I could easily write a few blog posts about the differences between American and British culture, but there is something fundamental about sharing a language that I didn’t appreciate before.
I know none of this comes as any surprise. It should be obvious that living in a place where they speak a different language is going to raise some issues. But somehow, having already lived ‘abroad’ for so many years, I hadn’t given real thought to this issue before moving.
One of the main issues my husband and I have faced is finding a church. When I lived in Oxford, there were oodles of churches to choose from: anglican, protestant, Catholic, orthodox- and all of different varieties. This is far from the case here. I get the feeling that the majority of Scandinavians have ditched church altogether, but there are a few churches dotted here and there across Oslo. However, funnily enough, their services are in Norwegian. In all the city there are only a couple of churches with English services, so we have had to walk long distances every Sunday for services that weren’t really our style. I recognize our situation is not that bad, we could live somewhere with no Christian churches at all (I am thinking of Saudi here) but it is still something I am only now realizing I had always taken for granted in the UK.
In a lot of ways, Norway just feels more remote than England. It doesn’t even have Amazon- imagine that! Shipping is slow and expensive. The supermarkets carry a comparatively limited range of products- there are for instance only three or four brands of yogurt and two brands of granola bars, no matter if you try all the stores. Distances are much further than in the UK, six hours by train to Bergen hardly makes for a weekend trip! Finally, things are just more generally less cosmopolitan and less diverse than in England. When I was studying in the UK university, the majority of the teaching staff was British but only barely the majority. Here, perhaps because of the language barrier, almost everyone (at least in my department) is Nordic, whether from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark.
None of these things are bad. They make living here more of an experience, which is, after all, part of what we wanted when we left England. However, they do all require some adjusting. I think it will take awhile before I feel at home here… although you never know, when my job is up in three years, maybe I will feel I want to live in Scandinavia forever. We will see.
What a transition! I’m excited for you to find out more about the pros and cons of Norway…definitely all this living abroad will enrich your life and give you tons of new experiences, but it also comes with awkwardness and frustration. I suppose even though the grass always seems greener, every country has its advantages and disadvantages, and no place is perfect. Saudi is more foreign in a way, but also less, because of the unique international community where I live. I have probably met more expats from around the world than I have Saudis, to be honest. For us, expat life is still a better gig than what we would have back in the States, so here we are 6 years later and counting.