Fake Plastic Trees
I moved to Norway for music, not forests.
Near Rjukan, Norway. Image: Josefine S. via Flickr The Beatles were the first to bring Norwegian trees to my attention, though the profound cultural insight I was hoping to glean while listening to “Norwegian Wood” on my one-way flight to Oslo was not to be. The title appears in the same sentence within the first and last stanzas — as the cheap yet chic material from which a paramour says her furniture is built — and is acknowledged nowhere else.
Still, the idea of Norway’s trees and forests retained a certain mystery. Now, after several months in the country, I can
