Norway Delivers Withering Response After Trump Calls It a ‘S***hole’

When Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen guided the first expedition of any kind to reach the North Pole, crossing the polar ice in the airship Norge in 1926, he did not demand that Norway alone claim the moment. As the vessel moved above the ice, he released the flags of Norway, Italy and the United States—honouring the two nations that had helped make the historic journey possible.

Nor did the descendants of Leif Erikson, the much earlier Norse explorer, spend centuries staging furious protests because American historians and textbooks overlooked his arrival in North America around AD 1000—roughly 500 years before Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic.

Those two formidable Norwegian figures might both have offered Donald Trump a lesson in keeping his composure during a crisis.

The US president appeared to lose his on Sunday. Speaking at a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, Trump attacked the Nobel Peace Prize—an honour he has openly pursued—for being awarded to a woman he said “nobody had ever heard of”: South African human rights lawyer Navanethem “Navi” Pillay.

His harshest criticism, however, was directed at the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, which selected Pillay. “So I’m not in love with Norway,” Trump said. “Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a s***house country, actually.”

“Now it’s crazy what’s going on out there. It’s called the world of politics.”

That very “world of politics” could soon deliver an even more painful setback to Trump’s pride—and to the broader narrative surrounding his second term in the White House—when voters go to the polls in next week’s midterm election. That may help explain why missing out on the Nobel Peace Prize, at a moment when he is eager for a political triumph, has provoked such fury.

At the Michigan event, Trump also floated the idea of allowing fewer Norwegian immigrants into the United States. “I didn’t get the Nobel Prize. So I don’t want anybody from Norway… I don’t want anything to do with Norway,” he said. Earlier this month, he called the decision to honour Pillay an “indelible stain on the country of Norway”. 

Washington insiders claim Trump is fixated on securing the Peace Prize—an award Barack Obama won during the first year of his presidency for promoting international diplomacy and a world without nuclear weapons. According to aides, senior State Department officials are constantly aware of the issue. One said Trump regards the prize as “the ultimate capstone to how history will remember him.” 

Apart from Obama, only two other sitting US presidents—Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson—have received the honour.

Trump spent much of last year seeking international backing for his candidacy, collecting nominations from officials in Pakistan, Cambodia and Israel, along with Republican politicians. He has pointed to what he describes as efforts to end conflicts, repeatedly claiming that he resolved eight wars and was “about to settle or win two more”—a reference to Iran and Ukraine.

Although 2025 laureate María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, handed her medal to Trump, the Nobel committee made clear that the physical gesture did not transfer the award. The Peace Prize remained Machado’s.

Trump’s latest remarks—and especially his suggestion of keeping Norwegians out of the United States—have drawn fresh mockery from his critics because he has previously urged the country to welcome more migrants from “nice” nations, including Norway.

In 2018, he reportedly complained during a White House immigration meeting about admitting people from “s***hole countries”, naming Haiti, El Salvador and several African nations. He then questioned why the US was not taking in more immigrants from Norway, whose prime minister he had met the previous day.

Six years later, at an event in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump again lamented that too few people were arriving from countries he considered desirable.

“And when I said, you know, ‘Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries’, I’m trying to be nice,” he told the crowd.

“Nice countries, you know, like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

Trump’s abrupt decision to demote the land of the Vikings, fjords and world-class skiing to ‘s***hole’ status was met with frustration at the government level as Norwegian officials said again that they have no influence over the decision on the Peace Prize.

‘He knows very well that the Nobel committee is independent,’ Espen Barth Eide, the Norwegian foreign minister, told his country’s public broadcaster NRK. ‘We have reminded him of that, in case anyone is wondering, and that is still the case.’

With a tact that suggested that the Norwegian politician didn’t want his country facing the Trump invasion threats that have come Greenland’s way, Mr Barth Eide tried to dismiss the US President’s churlish and foul-mouthed tirade as mere campaign rhetoric. He insisted Norway attached ‘great importance’ to its strong relationship with America, adding waspishly that Trump ‘is currently in the midst of an election campaign that perhaps isn’t going very well for his party, and that leads him to say a lot of things’.

Meanwhile, Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Store, was too busy to respond to Trump’s toxic language. With some irony, given this is supposedly about world peace, he spent Tuesday joining Finnish president Alexander Stubb in a rare 90-minute phone call to Russian leader Vladimir Putin to discuss peace negotiations with Ukraine.

The Norwegians are famously a stoic bunch, not prone to emotional outbursts, and many must have felt that punching back at President Trump was beneath their dignity.

The country of 5.6 million people hasn’t exactly taken to the longboats over the insults – perhaps because they know that calling an affluent, peaceful and beautiful nation like Norway a ‘s***house’ is palpably ludicrous.

Boosted considerably by oil and natural gas revenue, Norway is among ⁠the highest-income countries as measured by GDP per capita. Its sovereign wealth fund posted record profit of 1.75 trillion Norwegian crowns ($184.3billion) for ⁠the first half of 2026.

And there are plenty more impressive statistics where that came from, as both Norwegian and American critics of Trump have been brandishing online.

The metrics that show Norway significantly outperforming the US include life expectancy (more than four years), infant mortality, adult obesity (the US has more than twice the rate), GDP per capita ($106,000 to $94,000), corruption perceptions, press freedom and the World Happiness Rank, which has Norwegians in sixth place and Americans in 23rd.

Another statistic that rather undermines Trump’s threat over Norwegian migration is that the flow is far stronger in the other direction.

According to the Oslo government, more Americans emigrated to Norway in 2025 than Norwegians emigrated to the United States. Last year, 1,529 American citizens moved to Norway, compared with 1,005 Norwegians who relocated to the United States.

‘Dear President Trump – a little perspective from Norway,’ posted Norwegian Magne Bjella on X. ‘Please don’t lose any sleep worrying about whether we are coming to America. I’m very happy here.’

Bjella then listed reasons including ‘healthcare that follows us through life’, ‘time to be parents’, ‘subsidized childcare’, ‘accessible higher education’ and ‘support when illness strikes’.

One Trump opponent made their point by posting a video on X of ‘Norway’s coolest toilet’, an extraordinary architect-designed outdoor building in a beautiful mountain setting with a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a roaring river. ‘Here’s just one of the s***houses, Mr. President,’ scoffed the X poster.

Norwegian X poster Pal Johansen provided a few more figures highlighting what he saw as Norway’s superiority, including a murder rate which is a fraction of America’s, and a low rate of homelessness compared to the US.

Displaying more of the Viking ferocity of old, a popular AI-generated video on TikTok showed a smiling female Norwegian navy officer politely pointing out that the Norwegian government has no say over the Peace Prize before telling Trump: ‘Sir, you’re just a f***ing toddler throwing a tantrum over a trophy.’

In a long post on X, Peter Girnus, a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, reminded readers that President Trump did have the Nobel Peace Prize medal, at least in its physical form if not in status, thanks to last year’s winner.

‘You might think that holding a peace medal would make a man think about peace, even a little, even out of politeness,’ he said. Instead, Trump swiftly wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store and informed him that, having not been given the prize, ‘I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace’ and renewed his demand for ‘Complete and Total Control of Greenland’ (a territory controlled by Denmark not Norway).

‘Most laureates take years to disappoint us. This one did it in a long weekend, with someone else’s medal,’ Girnus added.

Norwegians last made a significant cultural impact in the US during this year’s soccer world cup when their fans became an instant social media hit by performing their ‘Viking Row’ ritual – pretending to row a longboat en masse – during their team’s campaign.

Video posts shared online yesterday showed American fans copying them – another blow to Trump’s insistence that Norway ‘sucks’.