Norwegian "Russ"

Inspired by this entry in karla, the Texpatriate's blog, I'm doing my own entry on the phenomenon "Russ".

Russ is a Norwegian, wacky tradition. For a whole month, the high school graduates will dress up in overalls and do all kinds of weird stuff in addition to drinking too much and driving around in painted vans with annoying horns (or, if they're in Bærum, busses with enough speakers to power a stadium concert). Of this I don't know much, as my friends didn't bother with van nor bus. But I can tell you about my russ experience nontheless.
Let's start with my overall. I absolutely loved it! And spent five hours ironing on different stickers.


This is my overall. Yes, of course I've kept it! It's bright red, not this icky pink-ish colour my webcam interpreted it to be.


The right leg. It says "Music" because that was my major.


The left leg, with my name on it. And on the back of the legs it has "Russ" and the year I was russ. Again, the colours aren't right here, the letters are bright white and the overall RED, not pink. See that crown on top of the "K" in my name? I named myself "Princess Kjersti" and had a tiara and cepter as accessories. The arrow and the very naughty "Admittance for free" sticker in the crotch area isn't something I'm very proud of, but I thought it was funny when I first did it. Not that it mattered, I was a very un-naughty russ.


Here's a detail from the back, one leg, upper thigh. I was particulary proud of this, with the little scooba diver ironed on top of the Titanic image.


Another detail, from the front of the overall. I had loads of these weird little characters all over my overall. Which is why it took me five hours to iron them all on!

OK, so wasn't it incredibly icky to wear that thing for a whole month without washing it, you may ask? Nah... Not really. I usually wore the top part hanging down and had a new tshirt or top every day. And I didn't roll around in the dirt like some of my fellow russ did. I did get fairly soaked a few times though. We had a "Water day" at school, during "Terror Week" and since most of the first and second graders (we don't call them freshmen and juniors here in Norway), we took it out on each others instead. Oh, the fun! Terror week was hilarious! We had a "Clown day" also, where we painted first graders and of course the "Water day" where we soaked them. And ourselves. Which can almost count as a sort of washing the overall?

The hat. Let's talk about that. Here's mine! (please ignore sleepy morning face Kjersti)

It has my russ name on it and everything :D And the tassle with the tokens I got for doing idiotic things. Because doing stupid things, is half the fun of being a russ.
My tassle had:
A doll shoe: for wearing the overall in a PE class
A wine cork: for drinking a bottle of wine in 20 minutes. (I drank Peach Canei because it had less alcohol, I was worried about getting too drunk. I will never ever drink that vile drink again! It's disgusting!)
A pacifier: For kissing a first grader
Candy lips: For kissing a fellow russ
A Thorn badge: For kissing a Thorn employee and saying "Thank you, Thorn!"
A pink feather: For kissing a person of the same sex.
A popsicle stick: For going for a swim outdoors before May 1st. This is the one I'm most proud of, as that water was DAMN cold. There was SNOW on the shore!
A Russ Card: For handing out Russ Cards to members of "Stortinget" (the parliament)
A smiley button: For talking with "Sinnataggen" in Frognerparken for 20 minutes.
A piece of "matpakke" paper: For stealing a first grader's lunch and eating it. I was a bit sneaky with this one, because I made a deal with a first grader about this in advance. She was a very good actor though, and seemed very displeased about having her lunch stolen. Hahaha...
A German flag: For speaking a foreign language one whole day (German). English didn't count.
Hubba Bubba paper: For chewing a whole pack of hubba bubba in class for one whole hour. Very interesting to answer questions from the teacher with my mouth full of gum, yes. Not to mention how my jaw hurt afterwards.
A piece of tape: For not talking one whole day. No one believed I could make this, but I did.
A condom: For buying condoms using sign language. To me, this was extremely embarrassing because my friends made me do it where I worked! Ick...
A knot: For not sleeping for 24 hours.

I also tried eating a big mac in four pieces, but I don't like hamburgers and I don't have a very big mouth, so it didn't work out.

I wasn't a very party party russ. None of my friends were. We were more of the "wine and intellectual conversations" russ. Hahaa... It was a lot of fun though, and a very social thing. I wouldn't have missed it for all the money in the world :)

**edit: There are russ that belong to the Christian russ groups, they don't drink and use their time as russ to try and save their fellow russ sinners. I was not one of them, in case you were wondering. I must say I belonged to the "sinners", but was less sinful that some of my fellow russ? Most of us music russ were. We had too much school work going on to be able to get drunk every day.