Norway and the world
Norwegians have a confusing relationship with the world. On one hand, they prefer not to be noticed, on the other hand, they love attention. The former is because of a deep-rooted fear that attention gives us more immigrants, and immigrants are trying to take over the country. This paranoid fear is not completely unfounded, as there are few coffee shops, bakeries or even bars in the capital where Swedish is not the lengua franca. It is, however, on the ebb, as unemployment is so low it seems like a joke to most foreigners.

The latter stems from the case that Norwegians know that they live in an insignificant country, for which they suffer with an inferiority complex. Norwegians are often childishly happy if someone writes about them, and doubly so if it's actually something positive.
This absurd mixture is difficult to explain without examples:

EU: Norwegians are divided into those whose relationship with EU is driven by arguments and those whose view border on religious extacy, more often than not against the EU. Actual arguments having been used are that EU is anti-democratic, fascist, the Beast (Rev. 13) and designed to steal money from Norway. The superior arguments of the pro-EU side is that everyone else is doing it.
Norway is slightly against the EU (52/48), partly for fear of bureaucracy, partly because of a paranoid belief that EU will steal Norwegian oil wealth.

Sweden: Norway is the kid brother who wants to be better than Sweden in everything. Considering that Sweden has successsful enterprises like H&M, IKEA and Volvo and Norway's mot successful company produces manure, further explanation is superfluous.

Denmark: Norwegians largely believe Danes to be jolly beer drinkers with a speech impediment. This is wholly untrue, as many Danes prefer schnaps.

England: For no particular reason, Norway has been in love with England. The love is unrequited, but Norway copes as would many desperate(ly love-struck) girl does when in love with someone as solipsistic as England, by making up excuses for them. Norway's relationship to Scotland is a bit different: Norwegians agree that Scotland is nice, but it's a bit too close to home, like kissing one's (actual) cousin.

Other countries: Norwegians are fond of their stereotypes, and hardly think outside the box if it can be prevented. Therefore:

• Finns drink too much and speak too little.
• Icelandic people are crazy.
• The Dutch are liberal pot-smoking, orange-clad and phlegmatic.
• The Belgians are much like the Dutch, except they drink more beer and smoke less marihuana.
• Luxembourg is a bank.
• The French are arrogant, self-serving people who refuse to learn English and eat squishy things like snails and cheese which isn't brown.
• The Italians are slick, often well-dressed and bad at speaking English.
• Spaniards are lazy (!).
• The Portuguese are much like the Spanish.
• Germans have no sense of humor and no tastebuds to speak of. But they make a decent beer. All Germans love marching.
• Eastern Europe is a gray lump of concrete and pollution whch lasts from Poland to Bulgaria and eastwards.
• Americans are the fat, jolly guy everyone wants for an uncle.
• Africans live on the savannah and hunt impalas. Or live in the city and scam money via e-mail scams.
• Latin-Americans are masochist who continuously vote for the worst alternative. Or they are drug lords.
• There are two kinds of Asians, Moslems, who are terrorists and oppressive, and the rest, who are just foreign.