Norwegian food
Anyone claiming that Norwegians have no sense of humour have yet to see Norwegian cuisine. Norway is a country particularily unsuitable for farming, and as such the raw materials are bad. To compensate for this, most Norwegian dishes are either cooked, smoked or lyed beyond taste.

Some typical Norwegian dishes do deserve special attention, though. First the fish:

• Lutefisk: For the rest of the world, lye is used to remove things, such as meat from bones or opening clogged sinks. In Norway, it is used to desecrate the body of a recently caught fish to the point where it is no longer recognizable as a previously living thing. The lye and the strong fish aroma of the cod seem to cancel each other out, because Lutefisk rarely tastes much. It is normally eaten as an excuse to eat bacon, butter and other side dishes that come with it.; much like the jacket potatoes in the rest of the world.
• Cured salmon: A marginally more papillically challenging dish, cured salmon is a pinkish orange bit of salmon salt-and-sugar-cured into a jelly-like condition. Cured salmon is normally served in small doses on top of breads. To add to the blandness, Norwegians often combine cured salmon with mayonnaise.
• Rakfisk: For a country with such long coast lines, it is interesting to see how many ways Norwegians have if ruining perfectly good and fresh fish. Rakfisk is among the nastier, it simply means fish fermented for three or four months.
• Crabs: (crustaceans, that is) are eaten fresh in large quantities with little but bread, butter and lemon (and large cases of beer or white wine) to go. Crab parties are the only Norwegian festivity wherein talking while eating is encouraged.

Then the meats:

• Fårikål: While not quite as inventive as with fish, Norwegians have their technique of making taste go away in meat as well. Fårikål (lamb in cabbage) is a stew consisting of bits of the lamb not much usable for anything else, much cabbage and whole pepper corns. This boils until it has no flavour and subsequently eaten.
• Pinnekjøtt: Lamb again, this time salted beyond recognition. Drink loads while eating this, or you will feel like a desert before dessert.
• Smalahove: In their defense, even Norwegians react to this one. In Western Norway it is costumary to salt, smoke and boil a sheep's head, without the brain, but everything else intact. This dish has a cult following, but is generally used as a punchline. Which is saying a lot.
• Fenalår: A lamb's leg salted beyond what even Norwegians are used to. It is edible, but hardly on its own
• Ribbe: Much like spare ribs, although somewhat more ritualistically prepared, as it is almost only eaten for Christmas.
• Game: Norwegians eat Rudolph. Get over it. It's quite tasty.

Other food and beverage:

• Dairy products: Norwegians love milk and cheese. Milk is relatively understandable, as it is fresh, cold and as a rule relatively untampered with. Cheese is a greater mystery. Norwegians export the harmless Jarlsberg cheese to several destinations, but themselves they prefer Norvegia, which is utterly tasteless. Norwegian versions of better cheeses and of course imports of cheese from better dairies abroad has kept more gastronomically advanced Norwegians alive. Norwegians also have a geitost (goat cheese), which is not a cheese and not made from goats. Rather it is a brown sweet lump based on cow's milk (and some goat milk). Geitost (or Brunost, brown cheese) is a national symbol, so be wary of not making facial expressions when eating it.
• Coffee and tea: Norwegians love coffee, and drink more coffee per person than any other people. This is also the only case wherein Norwegians care about the raw material. True Norwegian coffee drinkers can easily seperate between different types of instant coffee, and an increasing number is going over to roasted coffee. Tea is also drunk, but like in England, almost all Norwegians drink tea made from tea bags. A modest increase in loose leaf tea is probably coincidental.
• Alcohol: Anything that can be drunk will be. The Norwegian speciality is Akevitt (Aquavit), which is a potato-based spirit, which , as you can say about all Norwegian cuisine, goes well with beer.

Before giving up on Norway completely, you should know that there are a couple of decent restaurants specializing in non-Norwegian food.

Which brings us to fast food. Norway has many fast food restaurants, but few variants, and most of them are chain stores. There are for exampler 45 7-eleven in Oslo, or one per 12,000 inhabitants (in Manhattan, NY there are three). As 7-eleven and its Norwegian rival Deli deLuca (whose main difference is that they have more American products) are rivalling for young people who can't be bothered to go to a much cheaper supermarket, McDonalds and Burger King are fighting the Burger War, with Norwegian Pizza restaurants Peppe's Pizza and Pizzaekspressen taking care of the Pizza war. Pizza Hut tried and failed, and Taco Bell and KFC have never tried in Norway. This chain gang mentality has been wrongly called Americanism or American tendencies, as if New York or Chicago has no independent local delis and as if the above mentioned businesses are found on every street.

Between them there are restaurants who can pass off as decent, especially the Indian ones, even though the Norwegian palate is more delicate than most others.