Our final Wales Away adventure of the year. Tales of delayed flights, lost bags and snow.
“Clint. How do you say ‘duō shǎo qián?’ in Norwegian?”
“Hvor mye? Gareth, Hvor mye?”
If you’re heading to Oslo, you’ll need to know how to ask “how much?” in Norwegian.
A few years ago we were lucky enough to go on a cruise around the Norwegian Fjords. I was highly critical of people choosing to eat and drink on the ship rather than sample the culinary delights of the country we had travelled all this way to experience. Then we sat in a restaurant right on the harbour of Flam with a spectacular view down the fjord. And then paid £20 for a pint of cider. The next drink was bought back on the ship.
READ BLOG FROM THAT TRIP HERE https://peppermintiguana.co.uk/tag/norway/
There’s no avoiding it, Norway is incredibly expensive. But now I’ve got that out of my system, I’ll try to put that to one side, because the country does have one or two redeeming features. Like being one of the most beautiful countries on the planet. It’s rugged coastline is the second longest coastline in the world – after Canada – and it’s home to an incredible array of wildlife.
Norwegians are into peace in a big way, being home of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, who each year award a prize to people who are not Donald Trump. In 1993 they even tried to broker peace between Israel and Palestine with the famous Oslo Accords, which worked. For a while.
They are also into happiness and in 2026 Norway ranked as the sixth happiest country in the world by people who have got enough time on their hands to measure things like happiness.
A big factor in the source of this happiness is good a welfare state, such as universal health care and free education. You know, all the things the UK is constantly cutting back on. This is funded, in no small part, by the Norwegians investing the profits from North Sea Oil wisely. They have the single largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, with trillions of quids invested in the stock market, raking in huge profits for the people of Norway. They spend a lot as well, but the profits from the fund always equate to more than they spend. And the profits aren’t diverted to the bank accounts of the oil barons, they are shared amongst the people of Norway. Bloody socialists, sharing everything and making everyone happy.
It’s not quite utopia, but I’m sure as we blog about the week we will touch on this again.
Norway hasn’t always been happy, peaceful and egalitarian. There’s the small matter of the Viking chapter, from the late 8th century to late 11th century. A time when rugged beardy blokes dressed in animal furs and comedy hats rampaged around Europe drinking beer, smashing things up, molesting women, taking over foreign pubs and indulging in general pillaging type behaviour. Like England away but without the throwing plastic chairs bit. Although I’m sure if plastic chairs had been invented in the 9th Century, Ragnar Lothbrok would have had no qualms about lobbing a few of them.
We all know that the Vikings invaded England and did what Vikings do. But you may not know that when they got to Northern France they took a slightly different approach to the conquering game and integrated with the locals. As a result, people think that in 1066 England was invaded by the French. That’s not quite the case, England was invaded by the Normans, who were the descendants of Norse Men (an early example of the portmanteau being used in branding) who had decided they liked the warm weather and made France their home. A bit like Brits in Benidorm, but without the Irish Pubs. My point being, there’s a lot more Viking DNA in the British Isles than you might think.
The Vikings came from across Scandinavia, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. They were pretty good at rampaging across the rest of Europe being Billy Big Bollocks with their chests puffed out and nicking the other kids’ dinner money. But just like bullies on the school playground, there’s always someone bigger. For several hundred years there was a lot of toing and froing with control of Norway fluctuating between Vikings, Danes and Swedes – sometimes willingly, sometimes not so. In 1397 Norway entered an alliance known as the Kalmar union with Denmark and Sweden. When Sweden left the alliance in 1523 Norway was pretty much subjugated to Denmark. Norway thought it was Christmas and their birthday rolled into one when Napoleon conquered Denmark, but the Danes just handed Norway over to the Swedes.
There were many struggles for independence, but it wasn’t until as recently as 1905 that Norway officially became an independent country in its own right.
Norway stayed neutral during the first world war, but were occupied by the Nazis in 1940. The Norwegian people, like most people of occupied Europe, resisted the occupation – sometimes in practical and meaningful ways, sometimes in creative symbolic ways.
The ‘Shetland Bus Service’ was a clandestine shipping link where British Special Forces and weapons could be smuggled into the country to disrupt the occupation. With crossings taking place under the cover of night through treacherous north sea conditions, it was an incredibly dangerous and brave undertaking.
A more symbolic form of resistance took the shape of wearing red bobble hats. Initially it was a case of sharing Christmas cards depicting the Norwegian Father Christmas (Fjøsnissen) to show that Norway was maintaining its traditions and identity. This pissed of the Nazi scrooges so they banned the Christmas cards. In response, the Norwegians started wearing knitted red hats as a symbol of resistance. This was also eventually banned by the Nazis. So if you are rocking up to Oslo to watch Wales this weekend wearing a red Spirit of 58 bobble hat – you can thank the Norwegian Resistance for fighting for your right to do so.
Following the war Norway was one of many European countries that received a shed load of money from the USA Marshall Plan. Several decades were spent licking wounds and slowly rebuilding. Then in 1966, everything changed. North Sea Oil was discovered and the economy of Norway shifted dramatically towards the petrochemical industry. In 1967 the government set up a sovereign wealth fund which is now the biggest fund in the world. It invests all over the world and the money comes back and is shared by the people of Norway through things like pensions, free education and health care. Whilst this all sound fandabydozy, there is currently one down side to this. The fund focuses entirely on maximising profits for the people of Norway – and therefore doesn’t bother itself too much with things like ethical investment. Which means Norway and its petrochemical industry are massive contributors to the problem of global warming, but aren’t actually investing in the development of green technology. Well, that’s not strictly true. The Sovereign Wealth Fund is allowed to invest up to 2% of its portfolio in ethical investments and has set up Norfund – a climate investment fund. And 2% of a shit load of money is still a shit load of money (around £12 billion). There are campaigns to try to get them to invest more, but a recent news article quotes the head of the sovereign wealth fund, managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, stating that renewable-energy infrastructure investments have become overpriced. Watch this space.
Talking of global warming and carbon footprints, we are fed up with driving up to Heathrow, so for this trip we are flying from Cardiff. ‘But you can’t fly from Cardiff to Norway’ I hear you cry. Well, no you can’t. But you can fly to Amsterdam with KLM and from there you can fly to almost anywhere in the world. It was a little bit more expensive but when you factor in the convenience and the not having to pay for fuel to get to London, it was an attractive option.
For this trip we are playing three-a-side, and our team selection is myself, Megan and Becks.
Flights and hotels were booked, live gigs were researched and long johns were dug out of the bottom draw. And I reached out to an old mate from Oakdale who has been living in Norway for around thirty years. Not only was he free to meet up, he was keen to be our tour guide, chauffeur and translator – although in fairness, most Norwegians speak English anyway. He even offered to pick us up from the airport. Kerching, as they say in Oslo. All he wanted in return was a pack of pork sausages. You can’t get them in Norway apparently.
The last time I ate meat was Glastonbury 1990. I had been vegetarian for around six months. It was Sunday evening and I only had a fiver in my pocket. I had the option of buying a veggie burger or buying acid and having a chicken curry cooked by Wayne’s sister Sian. I had curry.
Thirty six years later I’m now in possession of meat (if sausage counts as meat) for the first time in almost four decades. There’s some sort of serendipity there somewhere.
I like Cardiff airport. It’s close to home and it’s quiet. Just a shame it doesn’t have many flights. I hadn’t heard about anyone else taking this route, but there was an abundance of Wales fans in the departure lounge.
The plane was so full we were asked to put our hand luggage in the hold. For free. So we could wander around the airport with just back packs and not have to worry about keeping an eye on cases. Result.
As we sat having the obligatory first pint of the trip, social media started filling up with pictures of snow at Oslo Airport and tales of two hour queues to go through passport control. We would deal with those problems when we got to them.
Cardiff to Amsterdam is only an hour, so we were soon entering the EU Schengen area in less time than it would have taken to get to Heathrow. Passport control was a breeze and there were no sniffer dogs to find Wayne’s pork sausages .
Amsterdam Schiphol is huge. It’s the 5th largest airport in the world, handling just shy of 80 million passengers each year. 104 airlines operate out of it and you can fly to 336 destinations around the world. So whilst Cardiff is a bit of a back water airport with only a handful of destinations, if you can put up with sitting in The Dam for an hour, you can fly almost anywhere.
Not unexpectedly, as we sat waiting for our connecting flight, it was announced there would be a delay because of snow at Oslo airport. It wasn’t closing, they were just reducing its capacity. They are used to dealing with snow in Norway. None of this closing schools at the first sign of frost malarkey we have in Wales.
I took the time at the airport to show Becks how to download his boarding pass onto his new phone. Or should I say, I downloaded it for him.
*Becks has insisted I include an anecdote about him telling someone I’m his father and them not doubting it. You had to be there to appreciate it though.
The delay was only around forty minutes and Megan and Becks were soon boarding. I was stuck at the departure gate explaining how I was already on board. Turns out Becks had used my digital boarding pass on his phone. I had to use his.
Did i mention it’s a big airport? I actually fell asleep whilst we were taxiing to the runway. At one point I woke up thinking we had landed and I had slept through the flight.
There’s another advantage of flying with KLM. You get plenty of leg room and free snacks and drinks. It really is a much better experience than Ryanair or Easyjet.
After less than an hour and a half in the air we were landing on a thoughrouly de-iced runway at Gardermoen, one of Oslo’s two airports. Because we had done the passport thing in Amsterdam, we didn’t need to do passport control again so all we had to do was pick up our bags and we would be jumping into Wayne’s Tesla.
Well, whilst it was convenient not having to carry our bags around, there is always the nerve wracking bit where you wait for your bag at the other end. Especially if you have been on connecting flights. And low, when the conveyer belt stopped, my bag hadn’t arrived. My long johns were still in transit somewhere.
We spent a slightly stressful half hour trying to work out who to report it to and what to do. It was odd, because the KLM app was telling me my bag was in Oslo. Then, as the carousel started up again to deliver bags from a flight from Malaga, my bag popped out first. I wasn’t going to wear the same pants for a week after all. (Although it wouldn’t have been the first time.) Wayne was relieved because he has been looking forward to sausages.
In no time at all we were meeting up with Wayne and climbing into his car. He had been an absolute diamond. He had sat patiently in a car park a mile away ready to pounce on the pick up zone when we were ready. The airport is 40km from the city, he really was going out of his way to help us. And we hadn’t asked, he offered. He had already made new friends in Megan and Becks.
I’ve known Wayne for probably forty years. He was my friend’s teenage little brother, but being a teenager never stopped him getting out and partying. When he left school he became a professional jockey and rode horses all over the world. When it came time to settle down he opted for Oslo and the rest is history. He is married with a family and lives near a lake on the outskirts of the city, often just grabbing his skis and heading up into mountains. When we jumped in his car it was like we had been together last week – although the last time I saw him was his sister’s funeral fifteen years ago.
Only a few short hours after a huge snow storm, the Norwegian Highways Department had all the roads cleaned and we zipped into the city in no time. We were soon being dropped off outside the Comfort Hotel. We couldn’t even give him petrol money, because it was a Tesla. We then waved him goodbye then went to check in.
Unfortunately we are staying at the Comfort Express Hotel, which is not here. We are given directions and laugh all the way for the ten minutes it takes to walk through the snow to the correct hotel. Although by the time we got there, Wayne was already getting stuck into a sausage sandwich at home and speaking with a Welsh accent again.
It’s a pretty compact city with a population of 728,000. Nowhere is far away and most sites of interest are within walking distance.
The Comfort Express is a ‘no frills’ version of the Comfort, but still a very modern and plush establishment. The rooms are spacious and comfortable. The only thing missing is a kettle and all the trappings that usually sit next to a kettle.
When we go down to reception to meet up Becks is queuing up to demand a kettle. He doesn’t get one. He tells us he wants to find another hotel that has kettles. We say ‘yes dear’ and ignore him. This is karma having her revenge for him using my boarding pass.
Immediately next to our hotel is a smart looking restaurant. It doesn’t look cheap, but we had decided before we came that we weren’t going to let getting worried about money spoil our trip.
Dispite being quite up market, it is an ‘app restaurant’, so you have to order food on your phone. It’s a million miles away from ‘Spoons though. It is sort of a tapas-ish type thing, where you order a number of small plates. They then come on a plank of wood which is placed on special metal brackets on the table. Each dish is around a fiver each, so you can spend as little or as much as you like.
The food is delicious and a relaxing hour is had putting the world to rights with close friends.
Then one of the staff advises me my payment on the app hadn’t gone through. I try again using me debit card – but no luck. I try my credit card, but no luck. Bloody Lloyds bank do make a point of protecting me from fraud. But when abroad it can be inconvenient . Luckily I had picked up a new Tesco Travel Money card that I had pre-loaded with Krone. This time it went through, saving me the embarrassment of sponging off Becks in a country that is pretty much cashless apparently.
We weren’t planning on staying out late, but we get the impression that’s not really an option anyway. The restaurant is closing now and Wayne advises us that Norwegians aren’t really into pub culture. Given our previous experience of £20 a pint, I’m not surprised. On social media I’m seeing Wales fans getting excited about places selling £8 pints. £15 a pint appears to be quite common. But hey, we aren’t here for the beer. We head back next door to our hotel and lay our sleepy heads on our pillows.