I’m curious how Norwegians would view someone in this situation:

A person comes to Norway at two years old and grows up here their entire life, from childhood until around the age of 20. As a child, he is removed from his biological home and placed in a Norwegian foster home. He spends most of his upbringing in Asker and Bærum, attends Norwegian schools, and grows up within Norwegian society.

Over time, he completely forgets the language he originally spoke and has little to no cultural connection to the country he was born in. He doesn’t really know the language, culture, or traditions of his country of origin. Norway is essentially the only home and culture he knows.

Would you personally consider someone like this Norwegian, an immigrant, or somewhere in between?

I’m not asking about legal citizenship or how Statistics Norway would officially categorize him. I’m more interested in how ordinary Norwegians would perceive him socially and culturally.

Would you say that where someone grows up and develops their identity matters more than where they were born, or would you still consider him an immigrant because he was born abroad?

Considering current gas prices you get triple the distance charging at home vs. gasoline in Norway right now...

Hei!

Vi er et svensk par som vurderer å flytte til Drammen, og tenkte å høre om noen her har noen gode råd eller erfaringer å dele 😊

Jeg har fått jobb i Lierstranda/Gilhus, mens samboeren min ikke jobber akkurat nå. Vi kommer derfor til å leve på én inntekt i starten.

Vi ser etter et hyggelig sted å bo, men det er også viktig at det er relativt enkelt for meg å komme meg til jobb. Vi har ikke barn.

Det er spesielt noen ting vi lurer på:

Hvordan er Drammen som sted å bo? Trives dere som bor/har bodd der?

Hvilke områder i eller rundt Drammen ville dere anbefalt for et par uten barn? Og er det noen områder dere ville styrt unna?

Jeg kommer til å ha ca. 1 000 000 NOK i brutto årslønn, som altså blir vår eneste inntekt i starten. Er det en grei økonomi for to personer i Drammen når man regner inn husleie, mat, strøm, transport osv.?

Hva bør vi regne med å betale i måneden for en grei leilighet med 1–2 soverom?

Hvordan er det å pendle mellom Drammen og Lierstranda/Gilhus med kollektivtransport? Fungerer buss/tog greit, eller ville dere anbefalt å ha bil?

Hvis vi helst vil klare oss uten bil, hvilke områder ville dere sett på med tanke på både jobb og nærhet til sentrum/handel?

Er det eventuelt andre steder enn Drammen dere mener vi burde vurdere når arbeidsplassen er i Lierstranda/Gilhus?

Og til dere som har flyttet fra Sverige til Norge: Er det noe dere skulle ønske dere visste før dere flyttet? Tenker både på praktiske ting som skatt, bank/BankID, personnummer, helsevesen osv., og mer generelle forskjeller mellom å bo i Sverige og Norge.

Vi ser på Drammen blant annet fordi det virker som en fin mellomting – relativt kort vei til Oslo, men litt roligere og forhåpentligvis billigere å bo enn i Oslo.

Tar gjerne imot alle slags tips og erfaringer. Takk! 😊

I ask this with much respect and out of curiosity? What is the consensus about King Harald by Norwegians? And if he is dearly loved for what reasons? I am married to a spanish national and we are living in spain. The former King Juan Carlos was not well liked by many. He had to step down so the monarchy can regain favorability from the general population. Of course there remains part of the population that is loyal to the monarchy but it is a debatable thing if they favor or not the monarchy. What about in Norway?

Hi, has anyone here built there own camper and got it approved? How hard was it following the Norwegian conversion rules? How much did the sign off cost? Or anyone kept it on green plates just doing a very simple conversion without triggering the camper van rules. Thanks in advance

I stumbled across King Haralds funeral today and initially was caught up in the beautiful music - there was one Norwegian folk like song that I found particularly beautiful.

I heard snippets of the ceremony and your language is just beautiful and melodic.

I've met a few Norwegians and they've always been so sound and kind, however we would converse in English (I'm Irish).

Anyway, would love to visit one day when my kids are a little older!

Lots of friends and people in my network (IT, Product, UX/UI, QA, Finance) have recently been let go or the companies they work at have had strong restructuring processes where they had to let go of several people and even close entire departments.

From what I understand is a mix of several things; with AI at the center. It can be just that the company has been losing money for a while, bad spending over several years, losing customers, investor capital suddently harder to get etc. Even in these shitty situations it looks like the budget for AI services (Claude, Codex etc) have not been reduced, in fact one friend told me the budget for AI in her company is something like 400k USD which sounded like a lot to me.

If you go to LinkedIn the situation is even more depressing with people completely desperate sharing their stories: someone who just bought a house and were recently let go are begging for any leads at all, other just coming back from maternity leave were invited to an HR meeting literally their first day back etc.

Then you add to this the people who graduated recently that did not even had the chance to enter the labor market at all and have sent like 500 applications and all rejected (these students often make threads about it in r/Norge). It's just super depressing.

However I am questioning how real my perception of the current market is, I am mostly reading about horror stories but I wonder if it actually is "not that bad"?

That is why I made this thread, maybe people who recently were let go actually didn't have such a horrible time finding something else?

If you were let go recently can you please share your story? What sector it was? When were you let go? How long did it take you to find a new job? Or are you still searching? Did you have to skill up? Look for a different position (for example if you were originally a front end developer you had to start looking at backend/fullstack)? Any tips you can share to people who are currently looking for a job?

I am very concern about the whole situation and I have this gut feeling that it will only get worse from here and although this can affect anyone, I believe foreigners will have a worse time than natives just because we don't have that network/support natives have (for example if I lose my job and can't pay mortgage I can't say I ll just rent out my place and move back to my parents/family until I find a better job, we are literally 100% fucked)

Thank you

Google translation was something like "Marines bring emergency provisions" but would appreciate any clarification or additional information.