Our days so far in Oslo have been filled with excitement, from scavenger hunts to government site visits. We have balanced our time with group dinners, discussions, and lots of walking around the city- yesterday I logged 10 miles!

Our trip has been go-go-go and it has taken us all across Oslo! We started our Thursday with a scavenger hunt through the city- we were tasked with using three different modes of public transportation, the bus system, the tram, and the metro subway system (known as the T-Bane). It was fun to learn how to read the city map, and test our skills as we visited the Royal Palace, Holmenkollen Ski Jump, Vigeland Park, and many more treasures that Oslo has to offer!

My personal favorite stop was the Opera House, home of the Oslo Opera and Ballet. The building, built in 2008, is designed to look like an iceberg poking out of the Oslo Fjord, and gives visitors the opportunity to venture to the top of the Opera House and see the whole city of Oslo. The view is breathtaking and is a metaphor for the equality and transparency that Norway employs in its approach to governance.

After our action-packed scavenger hunting, we spent our next day learning more about the ethical concerns of the city, meeting with the Norges Bank in the morning, and learning about the immigration system and its integration programs in the afternoon with the directorates of immigration (UDI) and integration (IMDi).

Norges Bank is the manager of Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, which invests Norway’s oil profits into equities and real estate abroad. This savvy investment has earned Norway 10,000,000,000,000 (and counting!) Kroner toward the country’s welfare system. That’s about a trillion US Dollars! This fund subsidizes about 17% of the welfare state budget annually, and is a major point of contention in Norway’s 21st ethics, due to the high profit from oil with a low incentive to divest from fossil fuels. We found the presentation to be very interesting and prompted a group discussion about how the country could use their influence as global investors to help the world move toward renewable energy investments instead.

In the afternoon, we visited with the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) and the Integration and Diversity Directorate (IMDi) to learn about what immigration looks like in Norway. During this visit, we met with jurists and lawyers who process asylum applications to Norway and explained the system of intake and how the jurists determine which asylum applications are accepted into the country. We focused on the role of Europe during the wave of people seeking refuge in 2016, and discussed how low intake numbers across the continent leave many asylum seekers with nowhere to safely land. After that, we looked at the integration program in the country, which is a 2-year language and culture program that seeks to integrate new Norwegians into the Norwegian system.

Both of our lectures were interesting and gave us lot to talk about during our group dinners and small group coffee stops.

We are all excited to learn more about the welfare state and Norway’s response to climate change in the weeks to come- stay tuned for more glimpses at Norwegian life!