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Starting out

I was born and lived in Sunderland for 24 years and thought you might be interested to hear my story.

At the end of the ‘60s there were more than 300 Norwegian students at Sunderland Polytechnic and I was one of the local lasses who met and married one of these students.

My cousin Linda - also from Sunderland - married my husband's friend, another Norwegian student, and all four of us moved to the Oslo area in 1971.

Now I'm 59 and my cousin is 56, and she has also been my neighbour for the past 23 years!

On holiday in the Lake District c 1967

Culture shock

When we first moved to Norway it was all just a big adventure. After a while though we started to realise it was really tough leaving our country, friends and family and moving somewhere with a different language, climate and culture.

But we were determined to become as "Norwegian" as possible and after a couple of years we were speaking the language fluently!

We adapted to a new way of life gradually - we started doing lots of outdoor activities such as skiing and ice-skating in winter and walking in the forests and swimming in the fjords in summer.

For two lasses from Sunderland who were used to walking to the nearest bus stop it was a very different way of life indeed!

Good old Blighty

What we missed most about good old England was the warmth and great sense of humour of the people we’d grown up with.

We'd come from a working-class background, from council estates and families who didn't own a lot, but the people were "salt of the earth" types and if we lived in hard times, at least we were all in the same boat and could always see the funny side.

On holiday with family in Norway.

Now, 35 years later, we know we will never move back to England. But we still have family and friends in the North East and love to visit them as often as possible.

On-going ties

My son has married a girl from Shotley Bridge in Northumberland and they are living near us. I'll be a granny for the first time in October and can hardly wait!

My daughter has moved to Birmingham. She’s torn between England and Norway and plans to move back to Norway "in a few years", but she’s loving the social life in England in the meantime....

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