For a fortnight every four years, Norway does not function with its customary Scandinavian efficiency. Phone calls go temporarily unanswered; conversations drift, mid-sentence, into silence; classrooms empty.

“It’s normal, I think,” said Christina Nygard, a marketing manager in Oslo. “This is our moment, when we can show the world what we are. Although without boasting too much about it, of course. That wouldn’t be very Norwegian.”

But when Marit Bjørgen stormed to victory in the women’s 30km cross-country on the final day of the Pyeongchang Games, so far ahead of the field that no one else on the course could even see her, Norway could be forgiven for boasting a little.

Not only had Bjørgen, with her 15th medal, become the most decorated athlete in Winter Olympics history (the second and third on the list, biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen and the legendary 1990s skier Bjørn Dæhlie, are also Norwegian).

A Norwegian fan celebrates as Norway win gold and bronze in the women’s 10km freestyle cross-country. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

But her win brought the country’s Pyeongchang tally to a remarkable 39 medals, topping the table, equalling Canada’s record for golds won at a single games, and eclipsing the largest previous total medal haul of 37, held since 2010 by the US – whose population is more than 60 times Norway’s.



“It would be difficult to imagine a better ending,” said the national daily Aftenposten of Bjørgen’s performance. “This was the prefect finish to the Olympics – not just for her, but also for Norway ... We have run out of superlatives.”

The Nordic nation of 5.3 million people spent every winter games in something resembling “a kind of state of emergency”, said Vegard Einan, a leading trade union official, taking collective time out for the main medal events. These ones were no exception.



A pre-games Olympics poll found that nearly 25% of Norwegian employees fully expected to be able to watch at least the biggest races of the day while they were at work, with 12% saying they intended to defy any management order not to.

Employees of Kahoot, an Oslo startup, watching a Winter Olympics ski event. Photograph: Fredrik Varfjell/AFP/Getty Images

Most companies seem not to have risked the wrath of their workers. It helped, said Fredrik Jensen, who runs a small temp agency, that because of the time difference, events in South Korea were over by soon after lunchtime in Norway.

“I’ve no objection to staff taking a few minutes off to gather round the TV,” Jensen said. “We all work better afterwards, don’t we? And I can’t imagine people’s frustration if they couldn’t watch.”

The prime minister, Erna Solberg, who was seen glued to her mobile phone and tablet during major medal events, gave the practice the thumbs-up, observing that if the games could trigger a “short-term fall in efficiency”, people were “happy when Norway does well, and this means higher productivity”.

The prime minister, Erna Solberg, congratulates Norway’s gold medallists in the men’s 4x10km relay cross-country skiing in Pyeongchang. Photograph: Jean Catuffe/Getty Images

School teachers, too, had unwritten permission to assemble their classes in front of a TV screen for the top events, while newspaper front pages carried daily photos of beaming Norwegian athletes clutching their medals – plus the occasional obligatory reminder that bragging is frowned upon.

Aftenposten published an opinion piece last week admonishing the nation not to get carried away with its success and noting it was not so long since the disastrous games of 2006 in Turin, when Norway finished a lowly 13th in the medal table. “The Swedes will laugh at us again,” it warned.

But with the state broadcaster NRK losing out to a commercial rival for the rights to the Pyeongchang Games and many Norwegians, unhappy with unaccustomed ad breaks in the middle of their winter Olympics coverage, turning to dedicated mobile apps instead, the impression has been one of a nation obsessed.

A speed skating team at the Winter Youth Olympic Games in Lillehammer in 2016. The 1994 Games are credited with inspiring Norway’s athletes. Photograph: JED LEICESTER / YIS/IOC/EPA

Older Norwegians say the atmosphere has rivalled the pre-mobile fervour of the country’s last home games, in Lillehammer in 1994, when the nation was so distracted that thieves broke into the National Gallery on the day of the opening ceremony, making off with its version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

There are reasons besides straightforward national pride for such all-consuming interest in the team’s performance: the vast majority of Norwegians either are or have been keen participants in many of the sports they were watching.

The country’s policy of sport for all and its emphasis on fun rather than competition – until they are 13, children are not ranked in sports events – means nearly 93% of children and young adults are active members of one of the country’s 11,000 sports clubs.

Camilla Larsen, an industrial designer, said there would doubtless be “huge celebrations” when the record-beating 2018 team – some of whom watched, and many of whom have said they were inspired by, those Lillehammer Olympics – returned home.



“We’re not a big country,” she said, “so even if we were all born with skis on our feet, like the Norwegian saying goes, when we finish ahead of countries like the US and Russia and Germany, we are proud. But also I think very many of us also know quite well, we feel, what the athletes have gone through. In that sense, they really represent us. ”

