For Norway’s tourism industry, Donald Trump’s crude remark has given Visit Norway a new way to promote public restrooms as destinations in their own right.
The campaign followed comments by Trump at a political rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, days before the US midterm elections. While discussing immigration, he said, “Frankly, Norway sucks,” used a vulgar slur for the country and said he would not welcome Norwegian migrants “because I didn't get the Nobel Prize.”
The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African jurist and human rights champion Navi Pillay. Earlier in October, Trump called the committee’s decision an “indelible stain” on Norway, and he has used the same insult for Haiti, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
Espen Barth Eide, Norway’s foreign minister, said Trump “knows very well” that the Nobel prize committee works independently of the Norwegian state and government. Eide linked the outburst to the US election campaign, saying Trump “is currently in the midst of an election campaign that perhaps isn't going very well for his party, and that leads him to say a lot of things.”
There is no indication that the Trump administration is adopting new official policy on Norwegian immigrants.
Visit Norway put its response on social media on October 27 and also published material on its website. The campaign asked whether the country’s facilities were the world’s best and used a slogan that adapted a familiar Trump campaign line with a profanity.
In one post, the agency said it had heard “some noise” about the insult before pointing to Norway’s “most beautiful and spectacular toilets”. A second post encouraged visitors to see them whether nature was calling or not.
The scenery is central to the pitch. An image taken inside the public restrooms at the Stegastein viewpoint in Aurland, Norway, looked out over a fjord on September 27, 2026. DesignCurial placed the Stegastein facilities in the Sognefjord region among its 10 best public toilets in the world.
The campaign also included the wave-shaped Ureddplassen facility on Helgeland’s wild coast, which several international publications have described as the world’s most scenic restroom. Other featured stops were a solar-powered modernist facility at the Utsikten viewpoint, a triangular “golden toilet” on Senja island, the “brutalist flower” toilet in Ryfylke, the “Hobbit toilet” and “space ship toilets” in Hardanger, and the “recycling dream” toilet in the Sognefjellet mountains.
Visit Norway said the country has “some of the most spectacular (and probably the most expensive) toilets in the world.” Jens Kjeldsen, a rhetoric professor at the University of Bergen, called the response well judged. Evgenia Egorova, a senior consultant at Visit Norway, said the reaction on social media had been immense.
One commenter offered a succinct endorsement, saying they would gladly visit the facilities.
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