Panting in Norway

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

To “pant” in Norway is to get a refund back on a bottle or can purchased at a supermarket.

Since the mid ’70s, in an effort to incentivize and increase recycling, the country added a surcharge on all plastic bottles and aluminum cans. Currently it’s $.20 per half-liter or smaller; $.30 for larger sizes.

It works. By some accounts, panting, if such a word exists, has accounted for 95% of all plastic bottles and aluminum cans being returned.

In the capitol city of Oslo, it has also produced entrepreneurship among the homeless, many of whom can be seen corralling and then dragging big, clear trash bags filled with spent Red Bull cans and Coke bottles behind them.

A hundred cans, a hundred bottles. You do the math.

It adds up.

Yes, there’s poverty here.

On Karl Johans gate, the city’s major thoroughfare, a woman sitting on a piece of cardboard in front of a department store has a sign propped up against a bag, one-third filled, of cans and bottles, that reads: “We all need a little help sometimes.”

The Metro (The T-bane) is run on an honor system. You’re expected to buy a ticket before boarding the train.

An inspector may ask for one.

(That laughter you’re hearing is coming from Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the NYC subway system.)

My wife and I were in Oslo 10 days and rode the T-bane everyday. No inspector asked.

A few years back, the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sámi, indigenous people who live in the north part of the country, and against those business concerns that built wind turbines in the region. The reasoning: the turbines scared off the reindeer and ‘Interfered with the rights of reindeer herders [the Sámi] to enjoy their own culture.”

Can you imagine Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas signing on to that decision?

In front of the Nationaltheatret, the nation’s major political parties, Labour, Conservative, Progress, Center, Socialist, Liberal, Christian Democrats, Green, and Red, have kiosks (they look like food trucks).

Some, in fact, provide food and drink; some provide pamphlets.

Democracy here is as noisy as it is in America. It just doesn’t seem as doomed.

There are protesters here, on Karl Johans gate, screaming in two languages about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Buddhists and Christians share a space and are chanting over each other. On the piazza at Oslo’s S Central Station, the country’s largest, Iranian activists hand out photos of jailed dissidents while playing Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind.” Falung Gong supporters stand near my favorite ice cream kiosk demanding Chinese authorities stop imprisoning and murdering those in the sect.

I wasn’t away from politics in Norway. But I was away from our politics — away from the existential dread, bothsiderism, second graders with guns, 10-year-old rape and incest victims who can’t get abortions, climate deniers, and, of course, Donald Trump, whose name I didn’t hear in a week and a half.

In 2022, there were 51,480 newborns in Norway. It was the lowest birth rate since anyone started counting. Still, babies and young families are everywhere and I feel like I’ve seen all 51,480. Happy infants — Norway is a nation that always scores well in overall happiness — being pushed in strollers on beautiful days by young parents reminds me of the Carl Sandburg line: “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”

It was a day in the low 70s. Melissa and I sat at an outdoor cafe, watched acrobats on the street, heard a pan flutist torture a number of songs, and saw a couple in matching Yoga pants canoodle their baby.

It was mesmerizing.

We canoodle our babies in America, too, and wear matching pants, but Americans argue about and march for issues that in Norway — homosexual and reproductive rights, global warming, universal healthcare, access to higher education, guns, election security — that have been largely settled. I’m sure Oslovians marvel at aspects of Americana when they visit the coffee shops in Chapel Hill and outdoor markets of Cincinnati, too, but ours is an increasingly tough country for anyone, citizen or tourist, to quote Sandburg.

At a convenience store called Joker, I told Lilli, a clerk behind the counter, my wife and I wanted to move to Norway.

“Oh, come! You’ll need a work visa.”

“I don’t really work. I write. I tell jokes.”

“Just tell them that and then get an apartment.”

“If only life were that easy.”

“Where do you live?”

“United States. Oklahoma —”

“—I have heard of it, yes. Lots of movies with the … I don’t know how to say.“

“We have trouble, too, coming up with words to describe it.”

“And I read in the news about what’s going on there. Crazy. I am a substitute teacher, and I know a family from the states who just moved here because they have a little girl and are afraid of guns.”

“As good a reason as any.”

“With guns, why does the US—?”

“Nobody knows. Not true — everyone knows.”

The last day on Karl Johans gate, the guy at the ice cream kiosk — the Iranians were still playing Elton John — handed me the perfect cone. I walked towards the opera house where one can stand on the roof and see the city skyline and its fjords. On the way back, I saw the woman on the cardboard. Her bag of cans and plastic bottles was full.

Long live the pant!

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter — quit laughing — and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. His latest book, “Jack Sh*t: Volume One: Voluptuous Bagels and other Concerns of Jack Friedman” has just been released. In addition, he is the author of “Road Comic,” “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Four Days and a Year Later,” “The Joke Was On Me,” and a novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages.” See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2023

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