My Norwegian relatives just came for a visit on their first trip to “America”, for the first 3 of their 6 weeks of vacation they get per year (!). Well, you only get 5 weeks if you’re under 60, but in Norway, they figure older workers could use an extra week. And, oh, by the way, Norwegians also typically get a little extra pay during vacations  – 11% of what they’ve earned in pay and overtime during non-vacation months.

I asked my 60-something cousins, Leif and Signe, and their daughter Tone and her family the rest of the story, so I could answer the inevitable questions about Scandinavia.  Okay, so you have all this vacation time, don’t you pay a price for it?

What measure shall we look at?

Unemployment? Norway’s unemployment rate is about 1-2% they say (of course it helps to be the 8th largest producer of oil in the world, according to the very bright and informed 15 year old grandson, Jan).

Time spent working? The men work full time (Leif works from 7 to 3:30).  The women work 4-5 hours a day, with the rest of the time taking the children to after school activities at gymnasium, cooking everything from scratch (including pizza dough – who knew that was even possible?) and generally having time for other interests.  I often receive something handmade at Christmas time from them.

Quality of life? After this big trip they had 2-3 more weeks to relax. Time to go to the tiny island off the Norwegian coast to visit Leif’s family and tend their potato garden, and inland near the family farm – picking cherries and keeping up the old homestead.  Even with all of this connection to the earth, the teenager, Jan, is every bit as tech-savvy as his American cousin.  I watched as Jan and Chase, having just met, glued to a computer screen and comparing iPhones.

I’m calmed by the pace of these slender blue-eyed people. They sit down for every meal and savor it.  They stop for ‘a coffee’ every afternoon and sit and talk to each other.  The children are calm and courteous, never once exhibiting the normal crankiness that follows long days of sightseeing. There is a genuine sense of appreciation and comfortable manners from the six year old to the sixty year old, which after the initial shock, I quickly adjusted to and will miss.  After every meal each child and adult looked me in the eye, shook my hand, and said, “thank you for lunch/dinner/whatever”.  Tusen takk (thousand thanks).

Health? Even though they eat well and often, they weigh a fraction of their American cousins, and I suspect from a health standpoint they will outlive us all.

I visited these relatives in Norway 15 years ago and visited an employer-provided child care center that was one of the best I’ve seen anywhere. A spurt in the growth of such centers was stimulated by a government initiative in the 1980’s when Norway realized that it would be good for its economy if more women were employed without compromising the growth and development of children, whom Norway prizes highly.  (It’s “National Day” is not a celebration of political independence like our Fourth of July – even though independence from Sweden is as important as our is from England.  Rather this biggest celebration of the year is a day of parades and feasting in honor of the nation’s children.)  We in the US seem to take the opposite approach, needing women’s labor for macroeconomic reasons (since they contribute the equivalent of 41% of our GNP) but leaving it to individual families to figure it out and then adding a healthy dose of guilt when they do.

The final measure comparing the US and Norway may be spending power. Even though the US dollar’s value is at a low ebb, that isn’t the only reason these Norwegians left with luggage packed full of newly purchased goods – 6 cameras and endless clothes (and one genuine cowboy hat for Signe, the country music fan).  Most would have cost 6 times in Norway what they do in the US! That doesn’t mean they can’t buy them in Norway; they do…it just means they can get them in bulk here.

Who is better off? It is certainly safe to say that our economy could use a few more visitors like these; it might be our new ‘economic stimulus package’.

Tusen takk!