So far, Norway has surprised me twice with things that I was surprised the US didn’t come up with first. The first is “Bacon Ost,” which is a bacon-flavored cheese paste that comes in a tube. The second is paying students to agree not to take the coronavirus vaccine.
My homework for my Norwegian class was to read two articles of my choosing from klartale.no, a Norwegian news site that uses very simple Norwegian to help those with disabilities, or for those who are learning the language. I know there is an election happening now, because I almost walked into the voting booth at the mall, so I hoped to learn more about it. Instead, I found myself feeding the entire article into Google Translate because I could not believe what I had just read. The “Alliance Party”, a far-right party in Norway, showed up at a school and started handing out 500 kroner bills to students who agreed to refuse the vaccine.
Now that I’ve had a moment to think, it seems to me just like the schemes many cities in the US used to encourage people to get the vaccine: handouts of free shots, stickers, doughnuts, coffee, whatever, for whoever showed up with a filled out vaccine card.