SKAM! 

Every time I start thinking that I have understood everything about Scandinavian culture,  I bump into circumstances that let me think that I have not.
So, yesterday I had a weird encounter with Norwegian shame culture. Two different events, in one day, and one repeated word: skam.  I seek your help, dear friends, Norwegians and not, to let me untangle this complicated issue that lies in my head.

The first event took place at the NAV office in my neighbourhood, the Norwegian Office for Social Welfare. As I am temporarily unemployed, or job-seeker, as they say in Norway, I have been called by the local NAV office to attend a meeting with other  people living in my neighbourhood who are in my same situation. About 20 people, most of them in my age, most of them born and raised in Norway, or at least fluent in Norwegian. The meeting was meant to give some some tips on how to look for a job, go to an interview, besides how to administer the finances while being without a fixed salary. The hidden line was that the meeting was meant to help us overcome the 'shame' of being unemployed.
In the talk, the trainer would start his sentences as: Det er ikke skam - It is not a shame - to contact your credit card agency and tell them to delay your bills for a while. Det er ikke skam  to call the House Bank and seek support to pay your rent. Det er ikke skam to buy less latte macchiatos in one day. Etc. In order to overcome the shame, we were offered a gym subscription for a reduced price and a free psychological support.
I got goosebumps when I heard: "Have you written on Facebook that you are job-seeker? Raise your hand if you have done that”. No hands were raised. The Nav officer repeats: "To be a job seeker is not a skam. The challenge for today is to go home and write a facebook status asking your circles of friends, family and acquaintances to help you spread the word that you are looking for a job.”
Now, I fully understand the point of seeking help among your circles of friends and acquaintances. In Norway, as in any other part of the world, it is easier to find a job through personal recommendations.   If you know someone, and someone knows you are good at something, this someone might know somebody who might be interested in your skills. Fair enough.
What I strive to understand are the remarks about the shame. In a system in which we are obliged to pay 30% of our salary in taxes to support this perfect social welfare system, why should one be ashamed of taking advantage of welfare? Why should one be even forced to announce it publicly? And in the specific in my case, should I be the one who feels ashamed after I got the highest possible level of education, and still be offered temporary contracts? Isn’t the capitalist system we are obliged to serve that should feel ashamed? isn’t academia - on a global level- in my specific case, the one who should feel ashamed for seeking the most absurd ways to keep us on temporary contracts in order not give us a fixed term job?

These were questions that were lying in my head, when the second event took place.
I have been looking for a nutritionist for over two weeks now. I haven’t spent the entire winter in Norway for several years, and I had forgot how enduring it is for my body. Because of the cold and dark, I feel tired, I have a constant headache, and my metabolism is very slow. I wonder whether the Mediterranean diet, with which I have been raised, is even apt at this cold climate.
Since I was child, I have been told that good nutrition is key to good mental and physical health.
So, I though I it would be useful to get the help of a nutritionist to help me find a diet that could give me more energy and concentration, and speed up my metabolism.
However, it is not as easy as I thought. After contacting many people, including my GP and the University Health Unit, it seems there are two solutions: one is to go to a private clinic, but this would cost lot of money, apparently so much that I was not even told the amount. The other is to get support through the public health system, but this is even harder. The University Health Unit offers a group therapy, but to access it, your GP needs to show that you have a heart disease or diabetes, or that you are severely obese. My GP, of course, has not approved my request to get the public support. The only alternative is to seek the advice of a Personal Trainer in the gym, that of course, is not trained in medical sciences.
So, yesterday, after all these phone calls, I was feeling so frustrated and depressed that I called again the nutritionist  who offers the group therapy at the University and asked: "Please, tell me, why is it being so difficult? In my country it is so easy to visit a nutritionist. Yes, it is expensive, but yet affordable. Why here it is not?" And the  answer was: "because here it is skam". The same word, repeated again. “It will change in the future, but it will take a while”.

Why in a country in which it is seems so important to look fit and healthy, it is a shame to contact a nutritionist? Why this support is offered only to rich or severely ill people? Is it more socially acceptable to visit a psychologist than visiting a nutritionist? And how will it change, if people don’t even talk about that?

Just because nobody talks about that, I have decided to write this post. I seek the help of you readers to give some answers to this questions, or add new ones.It would be graet if you could suggest readings or share personal testimonies that could help me understand what is skam in Norwegian society.  Academic articles, fiction, movies, all that would be great. I know the TV series, of course, and I am a big fan, but still I strive to understand the issue. Let me clarify that I don’t mean to criticise the society I am living in. Just take this as a sincere effort to understand questions that are so hidden in the social discourse, that my naive mind has only discovered them after 7 years of living in Oslo.