Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A Long-Tailed Seducer
At a cafe in Oslo, the wife of our host picked up a fork, leaned over the
table, and tapped her husband on the knuckles, “Keep your eyes off the
huldre, darling.”
The “huldre” was a tall blonde in pants at least three sizes too small.
In Norwegian folklore, a huldre is supposed to be a most beautiful
woman—but she has a cow's tail tucked under her skirt, perhaps tied
around her waist. And this bovine appendage is always dropping out at
the most inopportune times. For her tail to drop off completely, she has
to marry a man in a church.
The huldre makes a clever housewife and is resented—for that and
other reasons—by Norwegian women. The Anna, Noram, or Birgit who
wants to hang onto her husband is not averse to warning him against
accepting an invitation to go home with a huldre for the night. The hul-
dre has the power of stretching that night out for 7 years. At least that's
what many an errant Olav has claimed when he finally stumbles back to
his older spouse.
(Frankly, the tall blonde singled out probably wasn't a real huldre. It
was impossible for her to conceal a caudal appendage under those pants.
But that didn't matter. The wife knew her to be a huldre—and that was
that.)
Fun Fact
1 Norway Today
This long, narrow country stretches some 1,760km (1,100 miles) north to
south, but rarely more than 96km (60 miles) east to west. Norway is a land of
raw nature. It occupies the western and extreme northern portion of the Scan-
dinavia peninsula, bordering Finland, Sweden, and Russia. In the west, its
21,342km (13,339 miles) of coastline confront the often-turbulent North
Atlantic Ocean. For more details about the Norwegian coastline, see the box
“Norway Just Grows & Grows,” below.
There's plenty of breathing room for everybody. When you factor in the Arc-
tic desolation of the north, Norway averages about 20 people per square mile.
Most of the four million inhabitants are concentrated in the swag-bellied south,
where the weather is less severe. Even so, the population of Oslo, the capital, is
less than half a million. Aside from Oslo, there are no really big cities; the pop-
ulations of Bergen and Trondheim are 208,000 and 134,000, respectively.
Norway does not want to be a melting pot, and immigration is strictly con-
trolled. The largest minority group is the Lapps (or Sami), who live in the far
north; they have broad powers of self-government, including their own parlia-
ment. Although many people have emigrated from Norway—about one million
to America alone—immigration to Norway from other countries has been lim-
ited. About 3.2% of the population originally came from Great Britain, Den-
mark, and Sweden.
Norway is a constitutional monarchy. Although without political power, Nor-
way's royal family enjoys the subjects' unwavering support. The real power is in
the Storting, or parliament. Women play a major role in government. Some
40% of all elected officials are women, and women head several government
