Actually, domestic violence in Norway is among the lowest in the world, even lower than in the United States. However, since Norway has a long history of women's rights, the women there are also more outspoken about this issue and would naturally try to make sure that this unacceptable behavior will soon be part of the past. Besides, almost 60% of the domestic violence in Norway happen in families of ethnic minorities (predominantly muslim Pakistanis). And if you look at the most misogynic cultures (e.g., the Muslim nations) there are no reports of domestic violence, which certainly doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. A similar thing goes for Sweden and their very high suicide rate. If you look at those numbers and are not familiar with how compulsive the Swedes are when it comes to statistics, you might think there are more suicides in Sweden than elsewhere. However, in Sweden they investigate, for instance, every traffic fatality as a potential suicide. Such thorough data collection brings their numbers to a different level than, for example, Ireland where there's a certain stigma associated with suicide, and hence, is quite under reported. Under reporting domestic violence here in the States is a known problem -- the American culture is very private compared to Norway, and hence makes it more difficult to collect factual numbers of how widespread this problem is.
You know very little about me. I'm so far from being on a "Norwegian high horse". I can give you a hint though; from all the articles I've written about Norway, criticizing the Norwegian mindset, about fundamental west-coast Christians beating up their wives, about their inadequate immigration policies, etc., I bet there were quite a few Norwegians who were happy to see me leave ;^)
-- peer
