On the topic of Norwegian oil, a fascinating story of an Iraqi who helped them deal with being an oil-producing nation: https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com...

He was an oil expert who met a Norwegian au-pair in London, they got together, married, had a sick kid so they decided to move to Norway, and because he had the whole day before he could take the train from Oslo to her hometown, he decided to visit the Ministry of Industry to get leads on oil jobs...