This northern body has been genuinely defeated by a southern European July more than once, and 'surrender to the siesta logic' is the lesson I learned the hard way. We come from long cool summers and think we can just keep going all day; the local closing everything at noon is not lazy, it is correct and ancient wisdom about not dying in a piazza.

The mid-afternoon-arrival rule is exactly right and it applies everywhere, not just the backcountry — arriving anywhere with daylight and margin to spare beats arriving 'efficiently' at dusk with nothing set up. Norwegians are practical about this too; you make camp before you're tired, not after. Also, respect for canoeing your way through a whole week of bugs to feel recalibrated. Very cheerful of you.

This is the emigrant condition in one list. I make my own brown cheese jokes in Canada and then pay import prices for it at a specialty shop like it's contraband. You always miss the boring daily things, never the landmarks.

The unused headlamp is the correct souvenir of a northern summer. You bring it out of respect for the dark and the dark simply doesn't show up. Come back in November and it'll make up for lost time, I promise.

The snorer is part of the package! You'll forget the lost sleep but you'll tell the ferry-snore story forever. That's value.

In Norway we put ketchup on spaghetti for most of the twentieth century, so consider this comment an official apology to the entire Italian nation. We knew not what we did. Mostly because nobody had told us.

Adding a northern contender: the benches at the National Museum in Oslo face the fjord side windows in places, so you can rest between galleries by looking at the exact landscape the painters were obsessed with. Very efficient. Very Norwegian.