About The Norway Guide

The Norway Guide is a website dedicated to Norway and Norwegian culture. We aim to cover everything you could potentially want to know about traveling to Norway, moving to Norway or Norwegian culture.

We got something for everyone, no matter if your planning your vacation to Norway, getting ready to come to Norway as a part of a student exchange program, or just want to catch up on some of the interesting and quirky parts about Norwegian culture and cutoms.

The website is a small family business located in Skien, Norway. We are born and raised Norwegian, and have spent most of our life in this beautiful country.

Skien
Skien.

I, Nicklas, is the main force behind the website, and writes most of the content. I’m an ecologist, but are currently occupied with creating websites and content for a living.

You can reach out to me at nicklas@thenorwayguide.com if you got any questions or comments about the website or Norway itself.

Ryten in Lofoten in spring
Ryten in Lofoten in spring.

Our mission with The Norway Guide

The Norway Guide is divided into sevel different sections, all covering a different aspect of Norway and Norwegians. These sevel main focus points are:

  1. Travel tips and guides.
  2. Living in Norway.
  3. Norwegian nature and wildlife.
  4. News from Norway.
  5. Norwegian culture.
  6. General travel info.
  7. Viking Culture, History & More.

All of our content will fit into one of these seven categories, making it easy to follow along for only certain parts of the website if you don’t really want to browse trough everything.

Let’s take a bit of a closer look at what the different categories are like, and what type of content you can expect from it.

1) Travel tips and guides

The travel tips section of The Norway Guide is aimed at tourists who are either in Norway, or are planning to visit Norway at some point in the future. It’s a good mix of tips on what to do at certain cities or locations, tips for making your visit go more smoothly, and regular travel guides.

Some of the most popular articles in this category includes articles where we share our insider tips to popular tourist attractions, such as how to beat the crowds to get there or how to maximize your time at each location.

This category is perfect for anyone who are currently planning a visit to Norway, and want inspiration before visiting. It’s also an ideal place to check out if you are currently in Norway and planning on visiting a particular place, since we have lots of great tips to make the visits go more smoothly.

Crowd at Pulpit Rock
Pulpit Rock (Preikestolen).

2) Living in Norway

There are thousands of people who immigrate to Norway every single year, and it’s a popular destination for people who are looking for a life with a good work-life-balance and a somewhat carefree environment.

It’s not like anyone can freely immigrate to Norway with no strings attached, but for those that are able to actually move here will often find that there are many unique quirks and unspoken rules in Norway.

So the category about moving to and living in Norway is aimed at everyone who are moving to Norway, no matter if you are coming here for a 6 month long stay as a student exchange program or moving here permanently to start a new life.

This section of The Norway Guide includes things like detailed guides to finding a rental apartment, how to open a Norwegian bank account, or how to find job vacancies.

It’s also loaded with a lot of information about student life in Norway, so stop by if you are planning on coming to Norway to study!

Living room in a house in Bergen
Living room in a house in Bergen. Photo published with permission.

3) Norwegian nature and wildlife

Norway has some pretty unique nature, especially when we’re talking about the fjords! But there’s also so much more to Norwegian nature, and it’s even enough that we have an entire section about Norwegian nature and wildlife on The Norway Guide.

This is the place to check out to learn more about the different animals you might encounter when visiting Norway, or to learn more about the different parts of out nature. We have plenty of amazing hikeable mountains, huge wilderness areas and vast mountain plateaus.

It even includes a lot of information about the freedom to roam principles which allows anyone to freely use the nature as they see fit (within certain limits of course).

The man behind The Norway Guide is an ecologist by trade, so it’s a perfect fit!

Tenting in Jotunheimen
Tenting in Jotunheimen. Photo published with permission.

4) News from Norway

The category about news from Norway is pretty self-explanatory, and you get exactly what you expect. The Norway Guide is not a news outlet in itself, but we try to cover some of the big news that might directly affect or are interesting for our readers (expats and tourists).

So check it out to learn more about what’s happening in Norway!

Woman with a Norwegian flag
Woman with a Norwegian flag by the ocean. Photo published with permission.

5) Norwegian culture

Norwegians culture in one of a kind with plenty of unique quirks and unwritten rules. I have heard from many foreigners that the Norwegian culture is absolutely overwhelming, filled to the brim with silent expectations.

It’s uncommon for Norwegians to tell you when you’re doing something wrong, so it it often very difficult to learn what is appropriate or not in Norwegian culture.

And that’s where the Norwegian culture parts of The Norway Guides come into play. We got plenty of articles about the more unique parts of Norwegian culture, easing the transition to a completely new culture for foreigners who are coming here.

This is an interesting read for both international students, tourists who are coming here, people moving to Norway, or just anyone with the slightest interest in cultural phenomenon.

So check it out to find out why Norwegian go hiking on Sundays, eat taco every Friday, why babies are napping in the freezing cold, how much a bunad costs, or the concept of dugnad.

Children in bunads
Children in bunads on May 17. Photo by Sean Hayford O’Leary / CC BY 2.0.

6) General travel information about Norway

This section of The Norway Guide is the section about general travel information, with a lot of interesting information that you might want to know before coming to Norway, or just if you’re interesting in Norway itself.

This includes articles with information about practical things you need to know when visiting Norway, such as information about when to use winter tires, the Norwegian average salary, what Norwegian prisons are like, or the speeding ticket costs.

There’s a lot of different information there about many different topics, so check it out to learn more. I promise that you will learn something new!

7) Viking Culture, Viking History and other Viking posts

The final section of The Norway Guide is all about vikings. This category was added much later than the other six categories, but was added after we got a huge demand for it.

In this category, we’re exploring all things related to Norway’s ancient people the vikings. We turn the clock back over 1,000 years to look at how Norwegian society was back then, and answers a lot of popular questions about our ancestors.

This category does make a bit of an exception from the “Norway only” rule, seeing as we will occasionally also look at Danish and Swedish viking culture in this particular category.

Myklebustskipet
A replica of Myklebust viking ship. Photo by Ruben Soltvedt / CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Norway Guide’s history

The Norway Guide is a brand new website that was created at the beginning of 2022.

Despite this, we have seen an amazing growth in the first six months, so thanks to everyone who have helped out making the website so successful so far!

Our mission to keep growing the website is simply; we want to keep producing great content that you guys want to read and share with your friends. So check back for new posts every once in a while!

Ask us about Norway!

Got any questions about Norway? Let us know, and we will do our best to answer you! Just use the comment field below, or send me an e-mail, and I will get back to you very quickly.

It’s also possible to reach out on our Facebook page, or by sending a DM on Instagram.

I’m also answering a lot of questions about Norway on the /r/Norway subreddit, which is another great way to get your questions about Norway answered. The big bonus about this is that you get multiple views and answers, not only from me, but also from many other people around the country.

Kjeragbolten 1
Kjeragbolten.

Want to get your content published on The Norway Guide?

We do accept some types of guest posts on The Norway Guide, but we mainly want content from travel bloggers and others who have visited Norway or has some experience about Norway to share.

If you think this is something for you, reach out to us!

We like to collaborate with travel bloggers or travel influencers, or other type of bloggers or influencers that are connected to Norway is some way.

Unfortunately we cannot accept everyone, but people who genuinely want to share an experience or an interesting point of view from their travel in Norway are generally accepted.

Trollstigen
Trollstigen.

Get your photo featured on The Norway Guide

Get in touch if you want to get your photo published on The Norway Guide!

We’re always looking for new photos that can be used in our articles. All photos be will credited with full name and Instagram handle.

This is a great method to get exposure to your Instagram profile, and we have had many photos who have been exposed to tens of thousands of visitors, driving a decent amount of people to their Instagram profile.

Tenting in Jotunheimen
Tenting in Jotunheimen.

Reusing photos and images from The Norway Guide

You are free to reuse any photos that are credited with Nicklas Iversen / The Norway Guide under the Creative Common BY-SA 4.0 license. This allows you to use the photos on your websites, projects and more as long as you follow the terms of the license.

All photos must be credited to: “Nicklas Iversen / The Norway Guide / CC BY-SA 4.0.”

I will be uploading high-resolution versions of the photos on The Norway Guide’s Wikimedia Commons user.