I don’t know how to walk here

Letters from Oslo

This post is one in an occasional series of observations and stories about life in Oslo, Norway, where I am living with my family for the 2022–23 academic year. With me are my husband, who is conducting research at the Center for Advanced Studies, and our 7-year-old daughter, who is attending first grade in an Oslo public school. We live in Uranienborg, near the royal palace and Vigeland Park.

Sidewalks in Oslo can be anarchy. I swear I’m not making this up, and my investigation has adjusted for all rolling baby and child containers, myopic phone lookers, four-abreast tweens, and other forgivens. People walk on the right, the left, in the center, wherever, and don’t typically yield to any oncoming pedestrian. The thinking seems to go, “You do you.” Even if that means you go over the curb or onto an icy death slide sans crampons.

I loathe this daily face-off, even as I study it and attempt to game it and roll with it. I do believe that, being the visitor here, I’m the one who needs to adjust to local norms. I resort to, “Excuse me,” or “Unnskyld meg,” only when desperate, usually on a run. I’ll jog in place behind a couple occupying the entire sidewalk, somehow unable to hear the wheezing, rattling set of lungs behind them. Like the family in We’re Going on A Bear Hunt, you can’t go over it, you can’t go around it, you’ve got to go through it. So I must, horrors be, speak to strangers.

I posed a question about sidewalk etiquette to the r/norway subreddit, because I can usually count on Reddit communities to be helpful and decent. I struck a small nerve: The discussion grew to 161 comments. Some people told me to get a life and just walk. There were plenty of jokes about Norwegian introversion and aversion to social interaction, conversations with strangers, and eye contact. Jokey advice to bulk up and shove people to the side. This comment, from @partysnatcher, is my favorite:

OP, we say Norway is a country of “small kings,” one king on every hill in the country. That should not be mistaken as everyone being a dominant ass or a pompous git (I certainly hope not), it’s more about autonomy, for instance being used to walking in your own pace and your own thoughts.

While we obviously follow laws and stuff, people are pretty much willfully agnostic to any sort of top-down social regime. Aristocracy wouldn't work here.

Although you are American, and don’t understand our ways in this post, this individualistic bottom-up anti-aristocratic spirit is one of Norway's most American-like features.

This is so true. Allemannsretten, or the right to roam, is enshrined in law here and is deeply rooted in ancient traditions. You can go anywhere you like in nature if you pick up after yourself and tread lightly. Anyone in Norway has the right to forage, hike, and pitch a tent and camp, on open land—and there’s a lot of that here.

It’s also true that I don’t understand and probably cannot fully understand the cultural norms of this country. But I’m willing to try.

Travel reminds me I don’t know much about the world. I know a lot about living in the United States. While you’re in that cacophony, it’s hard to hear or perceive anything outside it. It’s an all-encompassing, attention-grabbing place where exceptionalism is just as baked into the collective brain as allemannsretten is in Norway. But step outside for more than a week or two, and you learn quickly that things work differently and very well in many other places, too.

My observations about the sidewalks here aren’t observations about individuals, or a city. They’re observations about collective values that drive behaviors. These behaviors repeat on public transportation, in the library, café,  grocery store, etc. And I see shifts in these dynamics, too, in smaller settings such as the sauna and salon. More on this later.