Hi,

I adore the north of Norway. The town we're in has 3 other surrounding towns (or more like villages). The total combined population is now around 9000 and we have noticed that everybody knows everybody. This is quite good actually because once you're accepted and make a friend or two, everybody wants to be your friend, it's nice. It also keeps crime rate extremely low because if for instance, someone stole a snow mobile or burgled a house, someone somewhere will know about it and you'll be an outcast and arrested before you can say "wanna buy a snow mobile". Nobody appreciates crime here. In fact, I've not even seen graffiti.

I think it's magical when I go out into the garden with the dog and look up and get to see the northern lights, what a show that is, and people pay fortunes for that chance. I'm not keen on the 24 hour daylight during the summer. Most people have blackout blinds or even tin foil over their bedroom windows. I suffered a terrible bout of insomnia last year because of the daylight. It is an experience though to come stumbling out of the pub at 12.30am and see it's broad daylight, I have a picture of it actually

I don't feel isolated at all. The town is busy to be honest and there's loads of shops. We have in total 7 supermarkets scattered around the area, one is on the Batsford fjord so it's such a pretty view just parking your car! In the summer months there's regular free fete's and open air live concerts etc, it's very lively, in the winter, there are competitions on the frozen lakes with snow mobiles etc. There's a ski slope a couple of km from here (it will be almost in my back yard when we move in April!) and in the summer it becomes a dry ski slope. That's popular. We also have the famous Ice Hotel up the road.

Eating out is not cheap and not all that delicious unless you go to one of the 2 Rica hotels, but they only serve a la carte, but my gosh it's lovely. I will say that Whale hunting is not illegal in Norway, in fact, there's only Norway and one other country where it's still legal, so you will see whale meat on the hotel menus. We have an Italian and chinese restaurant and most recently we have a surf n turf, but it is expensive.

Supermarkets sell a massive variety of food, that's one thing I was concerned about before moving here. All supermarkets though do a complete range of chinese, indian & mexican foods for example. Pizza's are extremely popular too. Fresh fruit and veg are in abundance and of a wide variety, potatoes are amongst the most expensive being around the equivalent of £5 for a 2lb bag.

The only down side if you're not good with it is the cold. The lowest temperature I've known now is minus 38c with a windchill to make it minus 45c. HOWEVER, cold as it sounds, if you're sensible and wear a couple of layers and a hat, you'll not suffer. The biggest shock is stepping outside for the first time in the day and taking a deep breath... I normally end up coughing a few times! It is funny inhaling and realising that "hey, I've got nose hair!" (it freezes a little LOL)

If you drive over here in temperatures like that, most places have electric points where you plug your car in to and it keeps it warm. Most people when they go shopping will leave their engine running and car unattended... and no, no car thefts! Do it in the UK and your car will be gone in a heartbeat. We have a new 4x4 pick up and often leave it unattended with the engine running while we're in the supermarket.

To buy a house is simple here. You do need residency first, preferably a permanent one which you can obtain after one year. They don't use credit scoring, they go by your tax record. What we did, we found a property, emailed the link to our bank, two days later we got a mortgage offer of 75%. Then (and this is normal practice) you go to the local Kommune (which is like the council) and apply for the rest. You'll need 2 pay slips and your Identity Number. A decision is given within a day or two. We got the 25% from the Kommune so we didn't need a deposit. The process is simplistic in comparison to UK, however, the actual fees and charges can seem complicated. It's taken me ages to understand it. I can explain in further detail with an example if you want to personal message me. But you will need permanent residency before you can be considered as a purchaser. You can't even buy a holiday home here unless your a permanent resident.

Flights are not expensive at all and from here, although it's a small place, it is a busy airport. The main airline is SAS and they're fabulous. The other airline is Wideroe, we call it the White Knuckle airline coz they're the small planes with propellors! They do short domestic flights like from here to Vadso and Vardo. I think our flights to Oslo were around the equivalent of £80 each return and that's a 2 hour flight with SAS. The only issue (for me, coz I hate flying) is that in the summer, the flight patterns change and if you come from UK, you have to fly via Amsterdam (I think) so you end up taking 3 flights just to get here, but in the winter you only take 2, one to Oslo then 1 to here. It's strange.  

Last edited by charmed-imsure on Tue Mar 30, 2010 12:47 pm; edited 3 times in total

PS: Sorry about the essay!!!  

Hi Again,
Thanks to Charmed-imsure also for adding her experiences. Just to clear up something on that post. You can buy a house on a "D" number and without being resident in Norway, I work with a German guy who actaully lives in Mexico, he is here about 2 weeks at a time each month and as he is self employed rather than paying out for hotels he purchased a house in Stavanger last week, admittedly he did not use a bank but paid cash (alright for some I guess). Holiday pay is simple.... whatever you earn in a year, Jan- Dec, you will receive as a tax free payment a percentage between 10 and 12%, so for example if you earned in a tax year 500,000 in 2009 in June 2010 you would receive around 50,000 tax free BUT no salary for that month, so in effect on the above figures you would get around 20,000 what you usually earn, then in December you only pay half tax as well.
As for living in the very North..... I heard that the Polar bears, reindeer and elg are very welcoming to new blood.... and it is a place where you really get to appreciate summer which last year was on a Tuesday Flights are not so bad in Norway if you book in advance and is very similar to the US where you use them like Taxi's really, the road and rail network is not so great here.
Any questions just post them up, we will do what we can to help.

Regards

Eamonn  

I stand corrected then on house purchasing. We were told by our bank and Kommune that we couldn't buy without a permanent residency permit, that was only 3 or 4 weeks ago. I suppose paying by cash could be different, but we had none LOL!

I found the holiday pay thing very confusing so I posted a link instead, I just couldn't find the words to explain it!!!

Reindeer freely roam the roads here during summer. They're protected too and belong mainly to the Sami people. It was amusing to pop out for the weekly shop and find a herd of reindeer in the car park area eating the grass!  

Don't apologize for the essays! Keep 'em coming! We find your 'essays' inspiring and if we could, we'd be in Norway tomorrow. Just have to wait for everything to come together... until then, we'll be researching and finding out as much as possible to be better prepared for the move in the future.

And again, thank you all for taking time to write and share about your experiences with us!