Patriotic Chocolate

In terms of innovative exports to the world, Sweden is famous for Ikea,  safety matches & Abba.  Australia has the Victor Lawn mower, the Hills Hoist, black box flight recorders and heaps of other stuff, and Norway? Well Norway has cheese slicers, Helly Hanson clothing, and the paperclip - In fact Norwegians were so super proud of inventing the paperclip  that in 1999 they even had a 100-year-since-patenting-the-paperclip national celebration.  Here's the commerative stamp..

So imagine the collective horror they must have felt when it was revealed that in fact the patented paperclip was not same design as the actual paperclip, and in fact the patented version barely worked at all.  But all is not lost, Norway does have something else to be proud of.. Freia Chocolate.  Yum. 

The Freia Company was created in 1892, I've also just learnt that the lunch room in the Freia Factory has the 2nd largest commissioned collection of Edvard Munch artwork (they have 12 paintings!), not only that, but they were the first company in Norway to reduce hours to 48, and the employees had their own private gardens to enjoy on the site. I want to work there!  Art and Chocolate! yum.

So when we were in Norway in January we tried to fit in with the locals as much as possible which of course involved having skis on our feet 90% of our waking hours and eating quite a few Kvikk Lunsjes. Without a Kit Kat to compare them to at the time, I would have made a case for them being exactly the same products in different wrappers.  This suggestion causes much uproar amongst the locals who claim  that the products are poles apart in both taste and class.  

But it's generally difficult to argue decisively either way because it's so hard to get hold of a Kit-Kat when you are Norway - mostly because Norwegian supermarkets  tend to sell nothing but these weird tubes of things  and cheese slicers.*

Once you unwrap the bars, the first difference is clear both out the outside and the inside:

Time for the taste test. Here is the judging panel..

However, when you factor in the fact that you get to eat a Kvikk Lunsj in NORWAY, doing Norwegian things, I'd be happy to give up Kit-Kats forever..

So therefore I award the Kvikk Lunsj with the grand prize of bestness, and I humbly acknowledge that the Kvikk Lunsj is different to the Kit Kat.  In fact the next day we changed the test (I told you it was rigorous), so that participants had to detect which was which (without seeing them). And we all did, so the Norwegians were right after all.