It’s become quite a hit in Norway since the the coronavirus epidemic had the country go on partial lockdown. (Unlike European countries further south Norway did not strictly confine its population to their homes. People could move around freely outside without a permission form throughout lockdown.)

If you live in Norway or have visited the country, you will know that Norwegians love to be active. 

We ski in the winter and go for long walks in the summer. We have søndagstur (Sunday walk), sopptur (mushroom walk) and bærtur (berry walk).

While none of these these different kinds of tur – except the hyttetur (cabin trip) – were banned during Norway’s coronavirus lockdown, all gyms had to temporarily shut down.

Norwegians love going to the gym. During the the calmest periods of the Christmas holidays – when stores, bars and restaurants keep closed – gyms for some reason stay open. 

For a long while, people also were forbidden to go to their hytte (cabin), preventing them from skiing as much as many would had liked over Easter.

While this was seemingly an efficient strategy to contain the coronavirus, it had people worried about how they were now supposed to burn off their påskegodt (Easter candy).

As a result, Norwegians are jogging like never before. Children’s playgrounds have been transformed to outdoor gyms. People are bringing their computers outside to do private kickboxing sessions, and no one finds that the slightest bit of weird.

Desperate time calls for desperate measures, they say.

Somehow, korona-kroppen replaced sommerkroppen (summer body, i.e. bikini body) as obsession, transforming the former goal of getting SK2020 (summer body 2020) with not getting korona-kroppen – an achievement we hopefully won’t need to date, as no one wants to repeat this next year.