With every warm day precious, Norway shuts down

OSLO, Norway -- If Norway hasn't stopped completely, its cities, at least, have slowed to a heavily sedated crawl.

July, for Norway's 4.6 million people, means three weeks of national paralysis called "fellesferie" -- vacation time.

Summer shutdowns are the norm for Europe, but are all the more far-reaching in this Scandinavian kingdom, whose northernmost outpost, the Svalbard Islands, is just 600 miles from the North Pole. Here, every 70-degree day is precious, so government, parliament and businesses ranging from regional airlines to corner hardware stores take time off.

Suddenly even the simplest expedition, to find a piece of pipe for the kitchen sink, becomes tantamount to scaling a glacier. As millions head for the fjords, islands or the Mediterranean, the capital, Oslo, sinks into an eerie quiet.

Suddenly parking spaces are abundant and the radio rush hour report is always the same: "No delays."

That's fellesferie.

The three-week vacation has no formal starting day, but Norwegians, perhaps through instinct or phases of the moon, know exactly when it begins -- usually the second week of July.

Exactly how and when did it all start? Surely the Norwegian Confederation of Business and Industry, the main employers' organization, would have the answers.

"I have just the man for you. He knows everything about fellesferie," said spokesman Finn Langeland, and offered up a name and phone number.

Naturally, the expert on fellesferie was on fellesferie.

"Sorry," said Langeland, "we just don't have anyone else."

It should have been easy to find out exactly how many people are on vacation because Statistics Norway, which counts everything from sheep to oil barrels, also studies vacation time.

An answering machine said the first contact listed on the state agency's Web site was on fellesferie. A second contact's number rang and rang unanswered.

At least the Internet doesn't take fellesferie. Statistics Norway's Web site says about 65 percent of Norwegians vacation during the summer.

Norwegians often want to leave Norway for fellesferie, especially when it's rainy like this year.

Going by air can be hard, not just because flights are full. On a single July weekend, SAS canceled 45 of its 600 European flights, stranding 4,000 passengers, because so many cabin crews were on vacation.

The small commuter airline Golden Air gave up altogether on its lone Norwegian route, between Oslo and the west coast town of Stord, grounded itself and went on fellesferie.

With so many homes empty, it's high season for burglars, and police complain of not having enough non-vacationing officers to investigate crimes. And try finding a washer for a leaking faucet. Once, I went to five hardware stores. Each was closed, "summer vacation" posted in its window.

And the government? With the prime minister and virtually all other ministers on vacation, who was running the kingdom this month?

The prime minister's spokesman couldn't help. He was on vacation. His deputy? On vacation. Information department? On vacation.

That's fellesferie.

Doug Mellgren, AP correspondent in Oslo, takes his vacations in August because no one is available to fill in for him during fellesferie.