(My free retelling of a chapter from a book by the young Frenchwoman Lorelou Desjardins; the title of the book is en FROSK i FJORDEN (A Frog in the Fjord))
So there, I have lived 12 years here in Norway and did not guess how Norwegians have acquaintances, meetings, parties and further «deep» relations. In the Norwegian language seduction and corruption are one and the same meaning — forførelsens.
The heroine and author of the book, Lorelou, working in a firm in Oslo, writes that her whole life consisted of short communication with colleagues during the lunch break and with shop staff whom she went in to after work. Before arriving in Norway she worked in Denmark and there she was left with a Danish boyfriend who married a Dane and was already raising a fair-haired baby.
Girlfriends started advising her to go «out among people» and create a profile on a dating site, and take this question firmly in hand 🧐 It turns out that in order to get acquainted with Norwegians you need to know the «Norwegian social code» (a literal translation from Norwegian), which is based on three principles.
Principle number 1 is eye contact. This may be a man or a woman who look at you hypnotically for several seconds. But a Norwegian man does not take further action first, whereas a Norwegian woman starts to attract — both to smile and to wink, i.e. to show initiative toward further relations. From this also comes the next principle — rollebytte (exchange of roles).
The author writes that foreign women in their countries are used to a more persistent showing of interest in a woman, to a more «bright» flirt, courtship. Norwegians have a «hidden» flirt, i.e. it is hard for a woman to understand whether this person likes you or not. It turns out that Norwegians are a bit afraid of women. And only alcohol, taken in a drinking establishment, can somehow help an acquaintance and a coming closer — or a not-coming-closer, but with minimal risk of being rejected. 😄
And so, principle number 3 — alcohol 🍷. Hmm. And here I fell to thinking. 🤔 Oh, this fooling around is expensIve with them here! And you can buy it only at a certain time in a certain place, which is called «Vinmonopolet». It turns out that in a bar there is a chance of getting acquainted. But native Norwegian women «do not doze»; while «ours» and other foreign women think, batting their eyelashes, Scandinavian women are active, invite to dance and flirt openly.
Those are the observations of the young Frenchwoman Lorelou Desjardins. She also mentions the Norwegian dating site sukker.no, where the language of communication is only Norwegian. Unfortunately this little book is not in Russian translation. I had the thought of starting to translate this book and in that way continue studying Norwegian. There is also the site afroginthefjord.com. On that site you can buy the book in English, Norwegian and French.