Which is a good thing, because Norway can be confusing at first - and Norwegians are a very odd people - they are walking paradoxes! Norwegians consume more coffee per capita than any other country on the planet, and read more papers than any other people in the world. So on the one hand we’re a nation of wide-awake, extremely well informed people. On the other hand, some Norwegians enjoy living in places where the sun doesn’t shine for months at a time, and consider fish marinated in caustic soda or dried and blowtorched sheep’s head a prime delicacy. This all points to something essential about Norway: a strange mixture of down-to-earthness, curiosity, tradition and innovation in the people here, all combined with a healthy dose of surrealism and madness. This, if nothing else, means that being a Norwegian means you have to develop a keen sense of irony. You’ll be here as part of your studies, so we’re sure you’ll be happy to hear that Norway has one of the highest standards of general education in the world. We’re wide-awake, well informed and well educated. Our egalitarian and freely available education system has led to a remarkable level of education, especially when it comes to women: over 60 percent of all higher education students in Norway are women.