Saturday, May 4, 2013

RUSS - A STRANGE NORWEGIAN TRADITION

In Norway, high school students in their last year before University participate in a tradition called the russefeiring ("russ celebration"). Basically, everyone who is about to graduate has to participate in this three weeks long event.  They all wear a pair of overall or dungarees; the colour is dependent on their stream at school, although most of them are red for academic; they are not supposed to take off these overalls for the entire three weeks!  These three weeks are officially from the first of May (although some started earlier) until the Norwegian National Day (May 17)


There is a list of about 100 tasks printed in the local newspapers every year and the Russ students are supposed to complete as many as possible.  When they finish a task they are given an item, a knot (?) or just the pride of having accomplished this task.


 Here you can see this video about  some creative tasks they had to do such as decorating buses, performing  songs, , or other much funnier activities as in example dyeing their hair in the colour of their  russ (black, red or blue), spending a night in a tree (earns a stick from the tree), crawling  along Karl Johans ( Oslo´s Main Street ) to Slottet (the Royal Palace)  as it is showed in some of the photos I took while I was  in Oslo. 




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