Return of the Norwegian Nomads

07/23/2020

It's 11.30 pm and it has been a very long day indeed.

I am queueing at the SAS counter, Gardermoen Airport, waiting to check in our two cats that have come with us from Oman. Their cages are wobbling precariously on a trolley the 11year-old owner of said cats insists on pushing himself.

I am hidden behind a mountain of bags stacked on another trolley and I wish I was the cat, fast asleep on a soft blanket. It's cold, I've been up since 4.30 am and this is the third airport I navigate today.

"This," I mutter grumpily to myself, "must be the dark side of corporate travel."

No Financial Times, no double espresso to go, no Armani suit and certainly no carry-on only. I've spent the last 15 years moving my family across international borders for a corporate job. Not my corporate job, but let's not get into that. Now, we're 'repatriating' to Norway. I use the term in the loosest of ways, referring to the return of someone to their country of citizenship or the country that is legally their own.

Norway is our country of citizenship, but my husband and I have been away for a long time. We met in the deserts of Oman. Our kids were born in Muscat and Damascus. They learned to walk in the jungles of Borneo and swim off the coast of Lebanon. They speak English and read Arabic, and they master Norwegian with a slight 'can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-it' twang.

We know how to navigate international schools, airports, new countries and new cultural codes, but I suspect that our ideas about life in Norway are grossly outdated and should be used as a vague mind map at best.

 This family of Norwegian Nomads have returned home for now - here's to turning making here home.

This text first appeared on Life in Norway. Image by A. Bortnowsky via Pixabay