Syttende Mai May 17 Constitution Day celebration in Oslo

We had special tickets to get in a special viewing area right on the Royal Palace grounds. The parade is coming right at you.  Then it turns to the left and makes a loop in front of the palace and the royal family.

Our exchange student from 1981, Kine, and daughter, Nora

Husband, Joakim, and son Kasper.

This is called the Children's Parade, totally composed of schools  First comes their banner.  This was Kine's school.

Then comes the marching band.

Then the Norwegian flags.

When they pass in front of the palace and the royal family, the flags are held vertically.

Royal Family.  King Harald V and Queen Sonja on right.
Left, Crown Prince Haakon and wife, Princess Mette-Marit and two grandkids

After the flags comes the student body, then the next school, 123 in all.

Debi and the kids

Even the spectators dress up.  This couple is wearing their bunads, the regional traditional costumes. You can buy "knock-offs" in a store, but the best ones are home made. A child's bunad is made with lots of extra material in the seams and hems so they can be enlarged as the child grows.  As you can see, a bunad is a work of art. Most Norwegians dressed pretty formally.  The tourists didn't.  I didn't have a tie, but did wear slacks, white dress shirt, and my Norwegian sweater.

Nora marched in her own parade all day waving her Norwegian flag.  She was so cute in her little bunad.  Lots of people stopped to take pictures of her including me.

 It was so thrilling to be in Oslo for Syttende Mai. Such spectacular pageantry, such beautiful people, colorful bunads, bands, flags everywhere, a mix of tradition and modern national pride. I got to see the royal family!! Danes and Swedes don't have anything like this.  Norwegians say they are jealous.

This is a odd tradition.  These three girls are part of russ, short for russefeiring, which ends usually at Syttende Mai.  The graduating seniors from high schools have a month long celebration of graduation.  Nightly parties, red bib-overalls usually with the suspenders not snapped so the top part hangs down  in front and back, your name is on the left leg. This goes on during finals which is amazing to me since entrance into a university is highly competitive.  Antics or dares are part of the fun like sleeping all night in a group in a grassy traffic round-about.  They have name cards with a saying on them that they hand out to kids.  Collecting the cards is very popular with the young kids so often the russ are mobbed by grade school kids.