Parents, police and Norwegians who need to sleep at night can soon breathe a sigh of relief. High school graduates known as the russ are winding up their last several days of heavy partying, which climaxes on Norway’s Constitution Day on the 17th of May.
Police were called out several places around the country heading into this long Ascension Day weekend known as Kristi Himmelfartshelg. “There’s been some disturbances of the peace and complaints about loud music,” Vidar Pedersen of the Oslo Police District told new bureau NTB. Police also needed to break up a fight between russ from two buses at Elveli in the Oslo valley Sørkedalen. There were no serious injuries.
There were other fights reported in Ytre Enebakk, Bærum and Asker. Police snatched the driver’s license of a man at the wheel of a russ bus at Tjensvoll in Rogaland because he had allowed 58 teenagers on board instead of the 21 authorized. Police in Agder and Nordland also reported some disturbances by russ.
There otherwise have been relatively few problems this year among russ celebrating the end of school. Only three people were cited for use of narcotics among the roughly 14,000 attending the large annual russ gathering at Kongeparken outside Stavanger, and there were no reports of violence. Just one person was evicted for drug use at another large gathering of around 6,000 russ in Lillehammer earlier this month.
newsinenglish.no staff
