How We Celebrate Our National Day

Hello Steemit friends! How are you? It's very late here in Norway at the moment (or early actually), but I've haven't been able to get back to a normal circadian rhythm after my night shifts. Anyway, I was looking through some of my photos from 2017 and saw these from our national day on May 17th. When I shot them I didn't think much of them, but seeing them now I thought it would be fun to share some of them with you and write a little bit about how we celebrate this day.

Celebrating 17th of May is a lot of fun! We dress up in traditional costumes, eat delicious food, and watch the parade. Some people do a thing called "champagne breakfast". It's simple; you invite your friends, eat breakfast and drink champagne. Awesome right? I didn't do that last year, but we did invite our whole family and ate lunch together though.

We decorated in red, white and blue, our flag's colors, and everybody brought food with them. I think the most traditional dish to eat on this day is sour cream porridge. I don't like it, but there's a lot of people who do. Super unhealthy by the way. We also eat freshly baked bread, scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, different kinds of salads, and so on.

We celebrate 17th of May to commemorate the signing of the constitution in 1814. It's a party for everyone, and especially the children. At every primary school the children walk in parades, play different games such as sack race, holding an egg or a potato on a spoon while you race each other, and many more. And they absolutely love it! Oh, and they get to eat a lot of ice cream.

What you see under this is the main parade in the city center of Stord. It's not too big, but I think almost everyone in Stord shows up to see this. And yes, they are playing volleyball while walking in the parade.

This weird looking man is actually my nephew. He is a speed skater, but when there's no ice he have to use roller blades. And of course dress up like an old man during the parade. He's really funny!

I think pretty much every club we have in our community join the parade. For example the diving club. And they always go all in with their outfits.

This is the children's favorite part of the parade; Russen! These people are graduating after 13 years in school. And in Norway we dress up in red pants, get drunk and party from the end of April until 17th of May. We use these pants EVERYDAY until that day. It's so much fun. Some of my best memories are from that time. I graduated in 2011, but I still remember it as such a great time in my life.

Children love throwing water balloons at them, but they do throw back. Or shoot you with a water gun. Children love it though!

I think I might write a post about my time as a russ. I have a lot of photos, and I would love to share them with you. It was a crazy time that I will never forget.

I hope you enjoyed my little (or big) introduction on how Norway celebrate its national day. But remember, this is what it looks like in my city. It's a lot bigger in Oslo, or Bergen. And I mean A LOT BIGGER.

Leave me a comment if you have any questions. I love communicating with you :)

Have a nice day.

Kristin.