Time for a deep dive on Norway, our new Winter Olympic overlords

PYEONGCHANG-GUN, SOUTH KOREA - FEBRUARY 09: Flag bearer Emil Hegle Svendsen of Norway leads his country out during the Opening Ceremony of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at PyeongChang Olympic Stadium on February 9, 2018 in Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
PYEONGCHANG-GUN, SOUTH KOREA - FEBRUARY 09: Flag bearer Emil Hegle Svendsen of Norway leads his country out during the Opening Ceremony of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at PyeongChang Olympic Stadium on February 9, 2018 in Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images) /
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PYEONGCHANG-GUN, SOUTH KOREA – FEBRUARY 20: Jarl Magnus Riiber of Norway jumps during the Nordic Combined Individual Gundersen Large Hill Ski Jumping trial round on day eleven of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Alpensia Ski Jumping on February 20, 2018 in Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)
PYEONGCHANG-GUN, SOUTH KOREA – FEBRUARY 20: Jarl Magnus Riiber of Norway jumps during the Nordic Combined Individual Gundersen Large Hill Ski Jumping trial round on day eleven of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Alpensia Ski Jumping on February 20, 2018 in Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images) /

Salty licorice. This is Norway. This is it.

There are two good things in the world

  1. Things that are really salty.
  2. Things that are difficult to chew.

Norway, in its infinor waysdom, has decided to combine these two things into one thing.

This is raw Norway. After all, Norway is an anagram of “raw yon” and ‘yon’ is short for “yonder” and Norway would certainly qualify as “yonder” to most people who were formerly American or Canadian or whatever you are/were.

This is an illustration of the Oslo skyline:

Author’s original
Author’s original /

Oslo is the capital of Norway. I’ve decided to indicate how many of these buildings are there solely for the production of salmiakki:

Author’s original
Author’s original /

Pretty amazing, isn’t it? It’s worth noting that most of the non-salmiakki-related buildings are actually cardboard cutouts with LED’s in them that are there for the salmiakki companies to point and laugh at on their lunch breaks.

“Ha ha, du er ikke en bygning, du er ingenting,” is what they say, which roughly translates to, “Haha, you are not a building, you are nothing.”

They say it with lilting inflections so that it’s more playful. The Norse are very welcoming, as we established earlier.

Next: Best Olympian from each state

I don’t know about you, but this new world hierarchy is pretty dang cool. It’s worth noting that we will have to give up some things like Italian food, all video games and movies with titles that begin with a letter of the alphabet before “G,” the ability to own more than three dogs, and toaster ovens, but that’s a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. I hope you embrace Norway as I have, and I wish you a Merry Norsemas.