Money — currency, cards, prices, and tipping
Norwegian kroner (NOK), how to get them, what they convert to, and how cards (which work everywhere) make this much easier than it used to be. Plus the practical answer to "do I need cash?" — *no, but a small amount helps.*
The honest headline on Norwegian money is that you barely have to think about it. Norway is one of the most cashless countries on earth; a card works everywhere, a phone works almost everywhere, and the days of arriving with a thick envelope of foreign bills are over. What follows is the small amount you do need to know.
The currency
The Norwegian currency is the krone (plural kroner), abbreviated NOK and written kr. Notes come in 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1000. Coins come in 1, 5, 10, and 20. You may go the whole trip without holding many of them.
Conversion at a glance
Exchange rates move, so treat these as approximate and check the live rate the week before departure (xe.com, or your banking app):
- $1 USD ≈ 10–11 NOK
- 100 NOK ≈ $9–10 USD
- 500 NOK ≈ $45–50 USD
- 1000 NOK ≈ $90–100 USD
The useful shortcut at this rate: drop the last digit and you’re close to dollars. A 350-kroner dinner is roughly $35; a 1200-kroner sweater is roughly $120. It slightly overstates the cost in your favor, which is a fine way to be surprised.
Getting kroner
For anyone who hasn’t handled foreign currency before, the process is simple and there are really only two good options:
- Order through your US bank before you leave. Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo and the rest let you order foreign currency online about two weeks ahead; it arrives at your local branch for pickup, for a small fee. Ordering $200–300 worth of kroner is plenty.
- Or use an ATM on arrival at Oslo Gardermoen airport. ATM rates are usually the best you’ll get. Withdraw $200–300 worth of kroner as a backup and expect to use little of it.
Two things to avoid. Airport currency-exchange counters (Travelex, Forex) run rates 5–10% worse than an ATM — skip them. And don’t bring US dollar bills expecting to spend them — kroner is the only currency Norwegian shops and restaurants take, and dollars will only be accepted, at bad rates, by the same exchange counters you’re already skipping.
One more step, and it matters for every traveler in the group: tell your US bank you’re traveling. Most banking apps let you set a travel notice in about two minutes. Without it, a card transaction in Norway can get flagged as fraud and frozen at an inconvenient moment.
Cards work everywhere
Card acceptance in Norway is essentially universal — restaurants, taxis, parking meters, rural farm stands, paid public restrooms, the Vinmonopolet, market stalls. Use a credit or debit card with no foreign transaction fee (Capital One Venture, Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Schwab debit card, and many others qualify). A card that charges a 3% foreign fee quietly costs about $30 for every $1,000 spent — worth getting a no-fee card before the trip if no one in the group has one.
Apple Pay and Google Pay work nearly everywhere too. If your phone is set up for contactless payment, you may rarely touch a physical card at all. Tap-to-pay terminals are standard.
What things cost
Norway is famously expensive, and the American instinct that lunch “should” cost $10–15 will be gently violated all week. Rough ranges, at about 10 NOK to the dollar:
| NOK | USD | |
|---|---|---|
| Coffee at a café | 40–60 | $4–6 |
| Pastry or waffle | 50–80 | $5–8 |
| Pint of beer at a bar | 100–130 | $10–13 |
| Lunch, casual café | 180–250 | $18–25 |
| Dinner, sit-down (per person) | 350–500 | $35–50 |
| Bottle of wine at a restaurant | 500–800 | $50–80 |
| Public toilet | 10–20 | ~$1–2 |
| Single Oslo transit ticket | ~42 | ~$4 |
| Souvenir Selbu mittens | 300–600 | $30–60 |
The prices are not negotiable and not a mistake. Adjust the budget and the expectations together, and the sticker shock fades by Day 2.
Tipping
Service is always included in the price. This is the single most important sentence in the article. Norway has no tipping wage and no tipping obligation; a tip is a small genuine extra, not a top-up the worker is counting on.
- Restaurants — rounding the bill up to the next 10–50 NOK is generous. Ten percent is well above expectation. Fifteen to twenty percent reads as unmistakably American — well-meant, and slightly off.
- Bars — round up or leave nothing. Both are completely normal.
- Taxis — round up to the next 10 NOK.
- Hotel housekeeping — a small thanks is appreciated, never expected.
- Tour guides — a sincere verbal thank-you matters more than the kroner. If a tour was long and good, a 50–100 NOK note is generous.
Card readers in restaurants increasingly copy the American habit and prompt you to pick a tip percentage at checkout. You can tap “no tip” without offending anyone. Norwegians often do. The cultural side of all this is in the How not to seem American article; the short version is that matching the modest local norm is the courtesy.
Cash strategy, in one paragraph
Bring or withdraw the equivalent of $150–200 in kroner as a backup and expect most of it to come home with you. A typical traveler spends 200–300 NOK in cash across the whole week — a tipped tour guide, a paid bathroom, a small market stall, the rare broken card reader. Do not bring a brick of cash. Norway genuinely does not want it.