If this wasn’t hard enough, we have to learn a new calendar

As our American readers know, almost any trip abroad requires calibrating to a different system of measurement. We anticipate marking distance by kilometers rather than miles, using Celcius rather than Fahrenheit for temperature, and paying for things with kroner rather than dollars. By now, I can do the conversion pretty fast: multiply kilometers by 0.6, double Celsius and add 30, divide kroner by 10, etc.

But then comes the real puzzle: how Norwegians measure time. Norwegians use months for general timekeeping, but for scheduling, planning, and logistics, week numbers (ukenummer) reign supreme. If you talk to a Norwegian about making plans, they are far more likely to say “let’s meet in week 23” (uke 23) than in “mid-June.” There is no easy conversion.

There are serious real world consequences for misinterpreting the system. We originally planned to travel around July 15, assuming that gave us about a week and a half to adjust before Annalise started barnehage in week 32 — which we believed was at the end of July. When we realized that week 32 was actually the first week of August, we pushed back the leave date and scrambled to find another week of camp for her in the US before we left.

Had we arrived in week 29 as originally planned, we’d have two and a half weeks of juggling work and moving in without childcare. To make matters worse, this would have fallen right in the middle of Fellesferie—Norway’s month-long summer shutdown—leaving us with zero open activities to fall back on. Avid readers will remember our last childcare deadzone, which devolved into us entertaining this child by riding escalators.

Fortunately, I have (hopefully) foolproofed this system. I’ve reconfigured Google and Outlook to display week numbers, changed my calendar apps to start on Mondays, and bookmarked an ukenummer converter on my browser. I may not naturally think in ukenummer yet, but at least we won’t show up three weeks before barnehage opens again.