Culture & Traditions

Norwegians, like other people who live in the far north, have developed coping skills to deal with the darkness that comes in the winter. They continue to engage in outdoor activities like skiing and skating and practice a concept known as ‘hygge’, which is creating a warm and cozy atmosphere to invite peace, comfort, and relaxation.

The flipside of the darkness is Norway’s midnight sun. In the summer months north of the Arctic circle the sun remains visible at midnight, around the summer solstice on June 21. The best spots to experience the phenomenon are in Bode, Svalbard, and Tromso. In Svalbard, the northernmost inhabited region in Europe, there is no sunset from April to August.

Easter is a time of colourful Sami festivals. Samis are indigenous people whose culture plays a large part in the wider culture of Norway. Traditional Folk music uses the Hardanger fiddle and traditional vocal styles. Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun are popular authors and Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ is an iconic piece of art, and sits in the National Museum in Oslo.

The giant fjords of southwest Norway, will bowl you over. There are more than a thousand of these long, deep, and narrow bodies of water that reach inland from the sea, usually with very steep hills or towering walls of rock on both sides. Hardangerfjord, the 4th largest and 2nd longest stretches 179 kilometres, and hosts Norway’s 3rd largest glacier. Sognefjord is the longest and deepest, with an arm called Naeroyfjord, UNESCO World Heritage Site. The highest mountains in Norway are here, and it’s the perfect place to take a cruise.

The Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, is a phenomenon of bright dancing luminous steaks of light across the sky in white and green – it’s actually collisions between electronically-charged particles from the sun that enter the earth’s atmosphere. They’re best seen in the polar night skies and occur roughly in 27-day cycles.