Why are those Norwegians so #$@!!! happy?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/03/2017 (3354 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been bothering me all week.

What I’m trying to say is I’ve been having a hard time understanding what those (bad word) Norwegians are so (bad word) happy about.

In case you’ve been hiding in a drain pipe since Monday, I am referring to the fact Norway, for the first time, finished on top of the World Happiness Report, edging out three-time winner Denmark for the title of “World’s Happiest Country.”

For the record, the happiness report is an annual ranking of 155 countries that assesses economic, health and polling data compiled by economists and averaged over three years.

Canada, which normally finishes fifth or sixth, was rated the seventh happiest country this year, our lowest rating since they started putting the happy facts together in 2012.

As a Canadian, I am fine with us being in the No. 7 spot. I do not wish to make sweeping generalizations, but as Canadians, we want to be happy but not “too happy,” by which I mean “happy to the point where our unadulterated happiness makes other nations feel unhappy,” if you catch my typically polite Canadian drift.

Getting back to Norway, I was curious what made them so happy this year, so I did what any crusading columnist would do in this situation — I asked my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, who is a fiercely proud member of the Norwegian community despite the fact she has never been to Norway in her life.

“What makes Norwegians so (bad word) happy?” I asked her the other night as we sat in the den gobbling cheeseburgers I had just pulled off my backyard grill.

I will point out here that my wife is one of those overtly happy individuals who spend their days smiling, patting puppies, being kind to strangers and thinking happy thoughts about rainbows and unicorns.

“What’s not to be happy about?” my wife replied. “Norway is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, what with all those fjords and Viking ships and everything.”

I did not find this answer satisfactory on a scientific level, so I pressed on. “It can’t be the food,” I grunted. “I mean Norway’s national dish is lutefisk, an unwholesome jellied mass made from cod preserved in lye. It tastes like…”

Before I could finish my distasteful analogy, my wife angrily snorted: “Stop right there! You and your Scottish heritage have no right to be critical of another country’s food. Your people are responsible for inflicting haggis on the rest of the world!”

Which is when I began loudly smacking my lips. “Yummy!” I chirped between bites of burger. “Boiled innards encased in a delicious sheep’s stomach. You are just jealous.”

What with being a sensitive modern spouse, I began to sense my wife was rising to a slow boil. “While you’re busy boiling up sheep organs, the Norwegians are outside cross-country skiing,” she pointed out.

“Cross-country skiing?” I sniffed. “That’s why Norwegians are the happiest people in the world?”

At this, my wife rolled her eyes back in her head and folded her arms across her chest to convey the notion that I had the relative intelligence of a cinder block.

“I’ll have you know the greatest cross-country skier of all time just happens to be Norwegian,” she declared. “He won every Olympic event there ever was.”

Which is when I smiled a cruel little smile, because I’d had this exact conversation with my wife, who is very bad at remembering names, several Olympics ago.

“Wow!” I chirped. “What’s the name of this Norwegian cross-country god?”

My wife glared at me with laser-like intensity. “YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO I’M TALKING ABOUT!” she thundered.

My evil grin grew wider. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m drawing a blank.”

Which is when my wife roared: “I’M TALKING ABOUT WHAT’S HIS FACE! HE WON 12 (VERY BAD WORD) OLYMPIC MEDALS — EIGHT GOLD AND FOUR SILVER!”

Which is when I helpfully picked up my iPad and did a quick Google search to discover my wife was, in fact, referring to Norwegian cross-country skiing legend Bjorn Daehlie, a man with more Olympic medals than Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz or (gasp!) Sonja Henie.

Clutching the iPad, I made a frowny face to convey how disappointed I was with my wife’s unpatriotic memory lapse. “Ah, yes,” I sniffed with a measured amount of disdain. “Good old What’s His Face. Talk about an unforgettable cultural icon. It’s nice to see he’s had such a big impact on your life, Sweetie.”

You will be surprised to hear my thoughtful remarks went down as smoothly as a huge steaming bowl of Norwegian lutefisk.

“You can be a real jerk sometimes,” my fiercely Norwegian wife grunted, before heaving herself off the couch and marching out of the den.

As a modern husband, I sensed this was the moment to make amends. “You don’t seem very happy for a Norwegian,” I yelled as my wife wandered away. “You’d better not go for a visit any time soon, because you’ll bring down the average.”

My wife is not the sort to seek revenge, but I smell a fragrant bowl of gelatinous cod in my future.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca