Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

WHAT CHANGES IN NORWAY

Discover Norway: Seven unmissable events in Norway in March 2023

Art exhibitions, food and wine festivals and one of the biggest ski events of the year make up some of the unmissable events in Norway in March. 

Published: 27 February 2023 16:39 CET
Updated: 2 March 2023 11:52 CET
Pictured is a cross-country skier.
Here are the best events happening in March 2023. Pictured is a cross-country skier. Photo by Barnabas Davoti on Unsplash

Stavanger Vinfest 22nd-25th March 

Towards the end of March is the Stavanger Wine Festival. Over the course of three days, wine lovers can expect some of Europe’s best winemakers and suppliers to be present for a weekend of tastings organised by 12 restaurants in Stavanger. 

One of the most popular events throughout the festival is the wine train on the 22nd. Those who buy tickets will be taken to nine wine-tasting events, seven of which will have food pairings. After the wine train, there will be an after-party with a DJ. 

Tickets for the wine train start from 895 kroner. Other events include wine fairs and a surprise lunch. You can read more about the itinerary here.  

Holmenkollen Skifestival 9th-12th March 

Ski Fest & Raw Air, or Holmenkollen Skifestival, will see the annual FIS World Cup Nordic ski competition draw thousands of spectators to Holmenkollen, the home of international ski jumping and cross-country skiing. 

While at the events, there will be several activities planned for both adults and children. Plenty of food and drink will also be available, in addition to an after-ski event. You can get more information on tickets here. 

Norwegian Seafood Festival 2nd to 4th March 

At the beginning of March, foodies in Trondheim will have the chance to enjoy the best seafood that Norway has to offer. 

Norwegian seafood is considered some of the best in the world, so this opportunity shouldn’t be passed up on. 

There will be several events across Trondheim at locations such as Ravnkloa, at Clarion Hotel Trondheim Brattøra, Olavshallen and the Vitensentret and more. 

Narvik Winter Festival March 17th-March 26th 

One of Norway’s most popular winter festivals is the Narvik Winter Festival in the north of the country. Once a year, the city celebrates the sun returning following the dark Arctic winter. 

The event is dedicated to those who built the railway across northern Norway and Sweden. The festival will see winter sports events, carnivals, concerts and opera performances. 

Around 25,000-30,000 people attend the events that are part of the winter festival. You can get a complete overview of the 2023 programme here. 

The Winter Chamber Festival Røros March 15th- March 19th 

The middle of March will see a classical music festival take place in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Røros. Other activities taking place in the town include skiing, sledging, historical tours and sampling local gourmet food. 

New exhibition at the Munch Museum on March 25th 

An activity with children in mind is the opening of a new exhibition in the Munch Museum. 

The Chamber of Chaos aims to provide a fantastical, imaginative place area for children where typical museum rules no longer apply. 

The exhibition will be on the museum’s tenth floor. It is a collaboration between the museum and costume designer Fredrik Floen. The aim of the exhibition is to stimulate all the senses and will feature a variety of soft-play building blocks and other objects, as well as specially designed and constructed architectural features. 

You can read more info on the new exhibition and tickets here.

Last chance to see Grayson Perry’s exhibition at the National Museum 

Grayson Perry’s Fitting in and Standing Out exhibition ends on Sunday, March 26th. Grayson Perry is one of Britain’s most celebrated and acclaimed artists. It is the artist’s, famous for his trademark satirical depictions of English cultural life, first solo exhibition in Norway. 

It features ceramics, tapestries and sculptures from the 1980s until today. Perry will also share personal views on identity, taste and gender roles, and the art world’s oddities via audio guides. 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

WORKING IN NORWAY

‘There was noone doing it’: The story behind Oslo’s only English bookstore

Six months after launching Oslo's only English language bookstore, Seattle native Indigo Trigg-Hauger doesn't regret a thing.

Published: 30 April 2024 15:05 CEST
Updated: 5 May 2024 10:22 CEST
'There was noone doing it': The story behind Oslo's only English bookstore

“I really love it. I love that I can finally use my communication skills for something that is purely my own and I just love being in the store, meeting new people, and getting to recommend books,” she tells The Local. 

Prismatic Pages, in the happening Oslo district of Grünerløkka, is already building up a steady following both among English speakers and readers and among Norwegians, with its packed schedule of events like book swaps, book clubs, and silent reading evenings.  

“The English speaking and reading community in Oslo in general is becoming more and more aware of it, and I have some repeat customers who are really spreading the word, which is amazing,” Trigg-Hauger says.

“But it’s sort of a slow burn. Even though all of our events have been standing room only, there are still people coming in every day who say ‘I didn’t know the store was here’, or, like, ‘someone just told me about this’, so I can see that we still have a lot of potential people to reach.” 

Trigg-Hauger inherited her fascination with Norway from her mother, who studied in Oslo as an exchange student and still speaks rusty Norwegian. 

“I always had the impression that we were Norwegian when I was a very young kid, and then I grew up and realised ‘oh, actually, no, she just loves Norway’.” 

She studied Scandinavian Studies at The University of Washington, came away from her year-long exchange year at the University of Oslo with a Bachelor’s degree in History, and then returned to Oslo a year later to do a Master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. 

“I learned Norwegian pretty quickly after I arrived, just because I had a little bit of a basis and I did an intensive course as well, so I am fluent and I have dual citizenship now,” she says. 

These language skills, together with the journalism she’d been doing on the side throughout her studies meant she fell on her feet on graduation, getting a job in communications at the prestigious Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) almost immediately, and then moving on three years later to a similar job at Norfund, Norway’s state development finance institution. 

“After only a year, I realised, this just isn’t for me anymore,” she says of the Norfund job. “I’m really good at communications, but I was tired of only doing it for other people’s projects and not my own. I think I’m very creative and independent. So I needed to do something a bit more flexible and something that was more driven by me.” 

Around this time, during coffee with a friend, she mentioned that she had worked in a bookshop in her home town, Leavenworth, for a year between studies. 

“I said, ‘that’s the only job I’ve ever really enjoyed’, and she said ‘well, you should just open a bookstore’. To which obviously I said ‘that’s crazy’, but then I actually did start to think about it.” 

Indigo Trigg-Hauger ran a book stall in May 2023 as part of her market research. Photo: Prismatic Pages

What helped push her to actually do it was a new scheme run by the local Grünerløkka city area called Lokalstart, where those accepted receive three months of free training followed by continued mentoring to start a business. 

“That really just, like, pushed me to do it,” she remembers. “Part of the course that for me was very helpful was that my course leader and my mentor encouraged me to do some market research. So I actually started in, just about a year ago, in May, I started doing just a table at a local market and I was seeing, like, quite a bit of enthusiasm.”

She realised that while Oslo had several independent bookstores, such as a queer bookstore, and an anarchist bookstore, there wasn’t an English-only one, and certainly not one which did what independent bookstores do in the US. 

“There was no one doing what I wanted to do, which was used and new mixed together and buying used books from customers, which in the US is pretty common for independent bookstores,” she said. 

So last August she handed in her notice, although she worked until the end of the year, and in December she finally opened Prismatic Pages, raising more than 60,000 kroner through the Norwegian crowdfunding site Spleis.

“I ran a crowdfunding campaign, which was also very helpful because I could both market the business and kind of get people’s buy-in, literally.”

She wanted Prismatic Pages to feel more open as a space than more traditional bookshops that she feels can be claustrophobic and worked with an interior designer friend to select the right colour scheme, furnishings and layout. 

“A lot of my inspiration just comes from the bookstores I grew up going to in Seattle, where I’m from, and also the store that I worked at, which was in a small town called Leavenworth, where we would also have small events. It really was like a community space where, of course, we had a lot of tourists and visitors, but also a lot of repeat customers. I was a repeat customer before I was an employee.” 

As for the books, she likes it to be an eclectic mix: something for everyone but still curated. 

“When it comes to books, I think humans are the best algorithm. Of course, some of it is personal taste, but I try not to let that get too much in the way of my selection. It’s a complicated mix of new releases, classics, maybe overlooked releases from the past. And then things that customers tell me about, and I just try to read up a lot on what other people are reading, you know, articles that recommend different lists of books.”

“Of course, sometimes there are themes, like, for example, Pride Month is coming up. I already have a queer literature section, but I’ll be beefing that up a little bit for June, and with the Easter crime season, we had a lot more crime in.” 

Prismatic Pages is already, she feels, a social space of a sort that is unusual in Oslo, particularly when the store holds events when people bring their own books and swap with one another.

“I love that people really start talking to each other,” she said of those events. “It’s kind of rare in Norway for strangers just to talk to each other. But they’ll start picking up each other’s books and discussing them, and that’s really nice.” 

The constant stream of customers also suits her sociable nature in a way her largely desk-bound communication jobs did not. 

“I’ve always been really social anyway. So I’m really active in many different activities. So it’s very nice that a lot of people come by from different areas of my life, all the way back from, like, 10 years ago, when I was an exchange student, up to my most recent jobs. I guess it’s good for my socially extroverted self to get to see new and old faces.”

What remains to be seen, she admits, is whether her new profession of bookseller will be work in the long run. 

“Time will tell if it is financially sustainable,” she says. “I do pay myself something, but it’s not really quite enough yet. So, you know, I don’t want people to think, ‘oh, it’s all just been rainbows and butterflies’. Because, you know, opening a small business is a huge challenge.” 

SHOW COMMENTS