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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

After visiting Norway in the summer, the only thing that would give me pause with regards to living there is the winter. I live at 41°N right now and I think winter has to much darkness. Imagining the opposite of the Norwegian summer I experienced is a bit much for me.

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As a Norwegian I absolutely hate the winter. It is my number ONE complaint about this country. I have for decades considered moving to some other country, but I never seem to be able to find a good alternative candidate. So many countries with nice climates are so broken in all sort of other important ways.

I did plan many years ago to settle in America, but I found it hard to accept the values of American society. While still immensely fascinated by America, and envious of the opportunities, climates etc afforded Americans, I have a hard time stomaching the rampant materialism, shallowness, and disregard for the lesser off. The revenge and punishment oriented nature of American society puts me off. It has too many rules, which are too harshly and inhumanely enforced.

Spain was an option too, but with the massive unemployment, low salaries and the fact that I don't speak Spanish, it isn't an obvious choice. But I've decided I am going to try to learn some Spanish. Maybe if I can run my own business I don't have to care about low salaries.

The US is a very large and culturally heterogenous country. While some of your concerns are valid, I suspect you will find much in common with people living in liberal coastal cities like SF, NYC, Boston, etc.

I'll be honest, it's a little rough. Around late december, the darkest part of the year, I barely see sunlight for a month or two. I'm at work by 8:30, sun rises 10. I leave work at 16:00, sun sets 14:00.

It gets better though, so by february the worst bit is over. It's not really that awful - you really get a physical sense of the year progressing, and in a sense the darkness is cozy. Lots of light in the cities, starry skies in the countryside. Get some solarium tan going and spend a week or two of vacation time in warmer parts of the world and it's not at all bad.

For me as a Swede, January is the hardest month. November and December when it gets real dark aren't too bad, you have Christmas and all that to both literally (what with all the lights) and figuratively light everything up. But then January comes around, Christmas is over, the lights all or mostly come down in the first or second week, and you're a couple of months away from any kind of spring rearing its head, with nothing to keep you afloat in the meantime through all that darkness.

I'm not gonna lie, it's tough. January is my least favorite month in the nordic countries.

As soon as February comes around things start getting better though. There's optimism in the air that while it's still cold and snowy (possibly even colder than January) spring is just around the corner. There's also plenty of winter sports around February and early March, such as the Vasa race[1], which is always fun.

Come April and May, when spring is in full force, the optimism reaches a fever pitch, culminating with midsummer eve in June. This is a huge part of the build up to the nordic summer, which is the most amazing thing you'll experience – in great contrast to the deep darkness of winter, the light simply never ends! If you're way up north, this is literal since the sun never actually sets. It's quite a sight.

Still, I've lived in other parts of the world with different climates and I wouldn't trade the nordic climate for anything. Like you say, the physical sense of the year progressing is something special, and even to the point that I almost get depressed without it. Certainly, if I miss the nordic summer I'm gutted.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasaloppet

It's not too different in London, to be honest. In December the sun is only up at 8, during which time a lot of people are underground on the tube, and by 6 the sun has set again when we're doing the reverse journey.

A lot of Norwegians go on vacation during the Winter; not unlike migratory birds flying south! Being able to afford vacation, and having government/employer support for it, probably has some impact on the happiness ratings.

That's a great point, I hadn't considered that (being an American). I was only there for two weeks, one in Oslo and the other in Bergen, but it was a fantastic country. The sheer amount of daylight in the summer was pretty great as well. Some day I'll go back in the winter to see the Northern lights and some starry skies.

Five weeks of vacation helps too.

They do have one of the last truly representative governments left in the world though. Really cool system that hasnt been captured by big money interests and seems unlikely to be corrupted by the same any time soon

As a dual Norwegian/American citizen, I would posit that a lot of that has to do with scale (ie, scale is necessary, though certainly not sufficient). The Norwegian government is on the same scale as many American municipal governments! And then you have local governments under that, that are obviously much smaller and thus even more hyper-local than many of their American counterparts. The larger your state gets, the more layers of abstraction and distance you get between the ruling class and the population, the more you dilute the power of an individual vote, and decrease the sense of connection between ruler and ruled.

And why many of us are fearful of becoming a EU member, and strongly dislike how much our politicians bend over backwards to implement EU directives via the EEA agreement.

Indeed, and this is why natality is an important topic for democracy. It's not just a matter of resources. Everything is easier to manage with less people, meaning more transparency, fairness and equality. The fact that we are not over populated doesn't mean we should not think seriously about decreasing our population size. It's probably a requirement to make the system evolve.

An alternate interpretation is that devolving political control to the smallest possible unit is an available option regardless of a land mass' total population size.

Exactly, yet somehow larger and larger entities are naturally assumed to be the goal. Probably driven by the same capitalist logic the drives business.

Then you stack levels of indirections, which is another source of problems.

However well Norwegian government works, it cannot do much about profits increasingly escaping to multinational megacorps who are taxed in a tax haven. Since corporations are global and sometimes more powerful than states, there are real disadvantages with going for more power to local governments.

A more just society means a harder life for profit driven structures. That's just the way it is : the more you want to benefit all, the less you can concentrate resources.

I left #1 for #9 closer to two decades ago. Personally I find the Australian society more open and inclusive, and less concerned with material wealth.

On a longer time-scale, I plan to do the same!

Awesome, you'll like it here. :-)

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