New Delhi: After US President Donald Trump called Norway a “sh**house country”, its tourism board has gone all out to prove the point—by showcasing toilets perched above fjords, tucked into mountainsides and offering grand views of waterfalls and dramatic coastlines.
Visit Norway now has a new campaign tagline: “Norway makes sh**houses great again!” And the website has a nifty page dedicated to them, headlined “Are these the world’s best sh**houses?” The pinned post on its Instagram handle also features a carousel full of lovely loos, along with the caption: “So, we heard some noise about ‘sh**house country’… What can we say, we do have some of the world’s most beautiful and spectacular toilets.”
The commode-heavy tourism campaign began shortly after Trump berated Norway at a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on 25 October.
“Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a sh**house country, actually,” he said, adding that he did not want Norwegian immigrants either.
His anger stemmed from the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to South African jurist and former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay for her work promoting international law. Trump had earlier called the decision an “indelible stain on Norway”. This despite the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government.
Rather than taking offence, Norway’s tourism board saw an opportunity in Trump’s outburst and launched the tongue-in-cheek campaign on 26 October.
“We thought: let’s meet them with kindness, and a little humour,” Visit Norway’s senior consultant Evgenia Egorova told Norwegian broadcaster NRK, adding that “the world needs a little laugh”.
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A land of loos
As luck would have it, Visit Norway already had plenty of toilet-related content ready for World Toilet Day on 19 November.
Among the loos getting their moment in the sun is the Stegastein viewpoint toilet, a striking glass-and-wood structure perched high above the Aurlandsfjord, with panoramic views of the water and surrounding mountains.
At Ureddplassen, on Norway’s Helgeland coast, a wave-shaped concrete-and-glass structure sits against the backdrop of the Norwegian Sea, while a gold-plated, triangular restroom on Senja Island, nicknamed Gulldassen or the Golden Toilet, offers a rather unusual roadside attraction.
The sh**house smorgasbord continues with the solar-powered Utsikten viewpoint toilet on the Gaularfjellet Scenic Route, 700 metres above the sea. Then there’s the Ostasteidn restroom in Ryfylke, painted with a moss blend that allows moss to grow over its concrete facade, helping the six-metre-high structure blend into the landscape. On Senja, the Tungeneset stop features a Siberian-larch walkway leading across the rocks towards the jagged peaks of the Okshornan mountains.
Norway didn’t need Trump to take its public toilets seriously. Many are part of Norway’s 18 National Scenic Routes, a network spanning roughly 2,240 km, where architects have been commissioned to turn rest stops and viewpoints into attractions in their own right. Some facilities have won international architecture awards, while others are designed to blend into the surrounding landscape.
The campaign appears to have paid off. According to travel industry publication Skift, Visit Norway’s toilet webpage attracted more than 80,000 views from over 170 countries in just five days, with traffic increasing more than 540 times compared with the previous week. Around one in four visitors was reportedly from the US. On Instagram, the post has racked up over 80,000 likes and more than 2,000 comments, with many praising the “hilarious” campaign and expressing a desire to perch on the scenic loos.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)