You Reap What You Row

Last week, I saw a hilarious social media post that featured a photo of smiling Norwegian soccer star and viral sensation Erling Haaland with the caption: “One thousand years ago this is the last thing you saw before your skull was caved in by a battle axe.” That may have been true back then. These days, Erling Haaland’s face, and his team in general, makes you feel another way: Happy. As the World Cup semifinals kick off, I know it’s a bit odd to be leading the day’s news with a story about a team that’s no longer in the competition. But since they seem a lot happier than the rest of us, I’m trying to adopt a more Nordic view of things, and a key part of that perspective is that winning is not everything (in sports at least, axe battles are another matter). And from the Winter Olympics to the World Cup, not focusing on winning has led to a whole lot of winning. “How does Norway do it? What’s going on in those fjords, exactly? One answer is that, from the youngest ages, Norway thinks about sports in a radically different way. In Norway, teams do not keep score before children turn 11, and the players cannot be separated into ranks until they are 12 or 13. Sports begin not as a race to the top, but as a constitutionally guaranteed social benefit for all, a place to learn, grow, and – perhaps most importantly – have fun.” CS Monitor: Why is tiny Norway so good at sports? It’s more than Erling Haaland.

+ A short video from NBC’s Olympic coverage. The Nor-Way: Turning good times into gold medals.

+ Think this attitude is all hype? Well, consider how Norwegians dealt with the massive disappointment of losing in the WC quarterfinals. Norway turns World Cup heartbreak into celebration as huge crowds pack Oslo. More than 100,000 fans flooded the streets of Oslo as the team led one more Viking Row.

+ Don’t worry. There’s still some overlap between our cultures. Stubborn Norway fan refuses to do Viking Row at World Cup because it’s factually inaccurate.