The Russ
Another weird cultural event takes place in Norway around this time. It's called the Russ (pronounced 'roose') or russefeiring and it's a two week celebration by high school students before their final exams. No one we asked could explain why students thought it was a good idea to spend the weeks before final exams drinking, dancing, getting high, and having sex.
Traditionally, students get together with a group of their friends and buy an old van or bus, repair it, and paint it with bright scenes and slogans. They live out of these vehicles during the two week long russ and we saw many of their painted buses parked along the city streets blaring loud music. Some of the buses were fitted with generators to power their stereos and we saw students lounging on bus roofs or dancing wildly on the grass at the side of the road. When ja took me along to the field site we saw buses drive by in the early morning with the sound of muffled music and the silhouettes of students dancing within.
After a series of drunk driving accidents, a law was established requiring students hire a professional driver during the two weeks of russ.
A recent study showed the levels of ecstasy in the sewage system increases 10x during Russ.
During the may 17th festivities we saw many of these students wandering the city looking burned out and tired with dishevelled hair and greasy skin like hadn't bathed in days. Many had numbers, words or lines written on their faces and arms with sharpies.
Russ students were easy to spot in the city because they all wore red jumpsuits. Students were expected to buy their own jumpsuits with suspenders and matching hat and they were often covered in badges. I was told these were earned before or during the russ for completing silly tasks or dares invented by some central committee. Ja mentioned seeing students crawling from the central train station to some far street to earn a badge.
The wikipedia article linked above has examples of challenges (with the type of patch they would earn):
- Answering every question the teacher asks by reading out loud from a porn magazine (pornographic picture)
- Speak a language other than Norwegian for an entire day (a piece of a dictionary)
- Drink a beer while having two tampons in your mouth (a tampon)
- Order a meal from McDonalds or Burger King without using vowels (a letter from the alphabet)
- Have safe sex outdoors (a pinecone)
- Ask for sex tips from the mother of one of your fellow russ (a safety-pin)
Most of the jumpsuits were red but we also saw green, black, and blue ones. Anders, our resident Norwegian and expert on the natives, explained the different colors indicated students specializing in different disciplines. Green was for people specializing in agriculture, students going to business school wore blue, and black was reserved for engineering students.
Liquor laws are relaxed during the russ and the underage students imbibe freely. When we went to vigeland park to attend a picnic (that was subsequently interrupted by freezing rain) a bunch of russ students swarmed our little bar-b-q group begging for food. Anders suspected eating someone else's food was another patch worthy event.
The Russ students carried around stacks of business cards. The cards had a picture - often, but not necessarily, of the student, the student's name and room for whatever else they wanted to add. Wikipedia says collecting stacks of cards from other russ students was a sign of social status but we mostly saw small children gathering the cards. We saw students in red jumpsuits mobbed by small children asking for cards several times as we walked through the city.
Anders said when he was a student he quickly got tired of dealing with the children and when he saw them coming would throw a handful of cards on the ground before running the other way. When we stopped to eat a lunch of weekend bread after walking through the city all morning, I saw children with thick stacks of cards sprinting across the grass to intercept kids wearing jumpsuits.
