How to understand the humor in Captain Fall based on my personal experience:
-Norwegians do not, and I repeat, DO NOT talk to strangers. Only the bare minimum if they have to, or if they are living abroad. The big joke during the pandemic was something like "man, I hope the six feet restriction gets lifted so we can go back to our usual ten feet".
- In the same vein, people who make noise are not accepted, and I mean any kind of noise. I am going to joke and say it's an ancient defense mechanism against avalanches, but they would probably tell me I'm being disrespectful.
-Norwegians are kind of like Japanese people in that they have a bunch of external niceties but will most likely not tell you what is truly going on with their lives (unless they're close to you). It's up to other people to figure you out, based on the teeny tiny, minuscule clues you might say or do. It is a big amount of emotional labor and I think that's the reason their humor is so cutthroat.
-A collectivist society, they are very skilled at reading the room, so the thing that makes them laugh is people who can't read the room, who don't care at all about social etiquette, or who don't see the ridiculousness of the situation. I've seen an entire room full of Norwegians speak exclusively in English because they don't want the two non-Norwegian speakers to feel left out. A Norwegian external to the situation would find that amusing.
-Now, here comes the weird thing: while they are very sensitive about people's emotions, if they see something as fact, they will tell you, and they will come off as blunt. Nothing about your appearance of course (it's a no-no to comment on people's looks, they do not find that funny at all) but about, say "Your country has shitty education" or "that joke wasn't funny". They do not mean to hurt you, this is genuinely what they think, and it has as much emotional charge as saying "the table is green". Scandinavians have this other joke (that in hindsight sounds offensive) "Why are women in Britain so ugly? Because we took all the pretty ones. "
So yeah, think about this next time you watch the show.
