"Among the real-life Norwegian phenomena made gentle fun of in the 2012-14 Netflix series Lilyhammer, starring Steven Van Zandt as a New York mobster who has moved to Norway under the Witness Protection Program, were natteravnene -- the “night ravens,” groups of unarmed citizen volunteers, including little old ladies, who patrol the night streets to talk wayward youths out of breaking the law.
No more: last Saturday night, a gang of “youths” in the Groruddalen area of Oslo, the physical descriptions of whom in the media made it clear that they were not ethnic Norwegians, threw rocks at a group of Natteravner.
The next night, a youth gang roamed around Tøyen, another Muslim neighborhood of Oslo, and threw rocks at passersby.
Minor crimes, perhaps -- but, in the Norwegian context, marks of a sea change...
...Don't believe my reports?
Fine -- listen to what Yuri Snegirev has to say.
Snegirov, a reporter for Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the Russian government's newspaper of record, visited Norway recently and recorded his observations in a three-part series of articles.
...He was appalled by how costly it is to travel by car, given the high tax on imported cars, the hefty tolls (and the extra charge to drive into Oslo), and the staggering price of gas (the world's highest). He highlighted one thing that I've griped about every winter since moving to Norway two decades ago: nobody shovels snow, so that the city sidewalks, except where underlaid with heating pipes, are covered for months at a time with deadly sheets of ice.
But Snegirev's comments on these topics were only prelude to the more serious stuff..."
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