If there’s one thing that we’ve struggled with in Norway, it’s that shops are closed on Sundays. For us, this means every Saturday, we have to think about what we are going to have for all of our Sunday meals, and what we will pack for Maddie and Ada’s lunch, which usually entails going to the grocery store late on a Saturday night after the girls are asleep. It’s also meant that we have to plan our travel to come back on Saturday, as the one time we came back on a Sunday to an empty pantry, we struggled with finding something to eat.
Really, I’ve come to think the perfect country is Norway, with reasonable shopping hours.
But then today, I saw this on the grocery store under our apartment. First cool thing to note is that every store posts their hours in big letters on their sign. The new part is that Søn 9-21, which I’m certain was put up this morning.
It turns out that it is legal for stores to be open on Sundays, so long as they are less than 100 square meters in size—our local Narvesen (something like a 7-11) is open for a few hours on Sunday.
Now here’s the amazing part—our full service grocery store beneath our apartment is way bigger than 100 square meters (though nothing like an American grocery store), but all this spring, they’ve been doing a massive renovation—removing the post office, replacing most of the cashiers with automatic checkouts, and I’ve been wondering why they’ve been housing stuff in a closet off to the side of the store. It turns out—that’s no closet, it’s the Sunday store—complete with it’s on freezer case, vegetable stand, pant machine(recycling station) and candy bins.
This is what the store normally looks like during the week:
But on Sunday, the store now closes off the main store with garage doors,
And leads you to a small, three-aisle store that has an even smaller selection than the already small selection of the main store, just for Sundays.
And there you have it—the first grocery store open in our town on weekends! I can’t imagine the logistical hassle of running a store just for Sundays within a store—moving fruit back and milk back to the regular store on Monday mornings so that it doesn’t go bad. But I’m glad that I got to experience Sunday shopping in Norway, if only for one day. If we don’t happen to make it back, it’s a pretty good assumption that the availability of Grandosia frozen pizza, one of the most popular foods in Norway, in our basement was just too tempting to leave. Truly, I’m embarrassed to admit just how much this commercial for frozen pizza is hitting me in the feels right now.
A Year in Norway 