Photo: Artaxerxes, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
President Donald Trump has added Norway to the list of countries he has insulted in vulgar terms, calling it a "shit house country" at a campaign rally in Michigan on Sunday and saying Norwegian immigrants were not welcome in the United States because the Nobel Committee had not awarded him its Peace Prize.
"Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a shit house country, actually," Trump told supporters in Port Huron, a week before the November 3 midterm elections. Attributing the recent unrest in France to immigration, he said he would welcome immigrants from some countries but not from Norway "because I didn't get the Nobel Prize … So I don't want anybody from Norway." There was no indication that his administration was adopting any new official policy on Norwegian immigrants.
Norway's response
Norway's foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, responded on Monday in an interview with the national broadcaster NRK. "He knows very well that the Nobel Committee is independent. We have reminded them of that, if anyone is wondering, and that is still the case," Eide said. His ministry declined to comment further, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The committee that awards the Peace Prize is based in Oslo, and its five members are appointed by the Norwegian parliament. But the committee is a private body and the prize is classed as private — a distinction Norwegian officials have pointed to each time Trump has aimed his frustration at the country of Norway rather than at the panel itself. The government in Oslo has no say in who receives the award.
A long-running grievance
Trump has made no secret of his desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize since returning to the White House in January 2025, and he has argued that the award should have gone to him. This year's prize went instead to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, a South African judge and former United Nations human rights chief. Trump mocked her as a "mystery person" during a campaign rally in Syracuse, New York. "I never heard of the person. Nobody did," he said.
Earlier this month he called the committee's choice a "disgraceful and embarrassing decision" and described the failure to give him the prize as an "indelible stain" on Norway. "The Nobel peace prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilisation. And we will not forget, Norway," he said.
The phrase Trump used on Sunday is one he has applied before, to Haiti, Libya, Somalia and Yemen, and similar vulgar language about Haiti and African countries during his first term drew widespread condemnation in 2018. Norway, the target this time, sits at the other end of most global rankings: it is among the world's highest-income countries as measured by GDP per capita, according to International Monetary Fund data, and its sovereign wealth fund posted a record profit of 1.75 trillion Norwegian crowns ($184.3 billion) in the first half of 2026.
The row lands in the final stretch of the midterm campaign, with Trump touring the country for Republican candidates ahead of the November 3 vote. His Norway remarks came in a speech that also blamed immigration for unrest in France — tying his Nobel grievance to the hard line on immigration that sits at the centre of his closing message to voters.
Sources: Reuters, AFP