Norway’s tourism board fired back at Donald Trump with toilet humor after the US president branded the Scandinavian nation a “s***house country” during a weekend rally.
Trump, 78, lashed out at the longtime NATO ally while complaining that the Oslo-based Nobel Peace Prize committee had repeatedly passed him over for the prestigious award. The 2026 honor went instead to Navi Pillay, a South African jurist and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Norway has become a s***house country, actually,” Trump said during the speech, reviving vulgar terminology he had previously directed at several African and Caribbean nations. “Because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize… So I don’t want anybody from Norway.”
Trump has openly coveted the Nobel Peace Prize for years, previously calling the committee’s failure to recognize him an “indelible stain” on Norway.
Rather than issue a formal diplomatic protest, Visit Norway—the country’s official tourist board—responded by compiling a promotional guide to the nation’s most architecturally striking public restrooms under the banner: “Are these the world’s best s*** houses?”
Turning Trump’s own political slogan against him, the board declared that “Norway makes s*** houses great again.” The guide highlighted scenic restrooms along the country’s famous fjord trails and tourist routes.
“These toilets are worth a visit, both when you really have to go – and when you don’t,” the board quipped in the campaign.
The guide took a direct jab at Trump’s taste for gilded luxury by featuring the Ersfjordstranda rest stop on the island of Senja. “If you are a mere mortal like us and can’t afford a gold-plated toilet seat, the Golden loo on the island Senja is the next best thing,” the board wrote.
Evgenia Egorova, a senior adviser at Visit Norway, explained the campaign’s thinking in an interview with national broadcaster NRK. “Sometimes it doesn’t take much, just a little do-it-yourself humour and fantastic Norwegian architecture,” she said.
Jens Kjeldsen, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Bergen, praised the approach for defusing the attack without inflaming tensions. “By creating humour, the statements become less serious than they otherwise would have been,” he said. “It’s like the bully in kindergarten. If you get too serious, the bully will win, but if you manage to take it with a smile, or make fun of the bully, you’re in a much better position.”
Communications and political experts widely credited the tongue-in-cheek campaign with deftly neutralizing Trump’s verbal assault while keeping Norway above the fray.
The episode follows Trump’s long pattern of publicly lobbying for Nobel recognition and reacting bitterly when overlooked. During his first term, he repeatedly suggested he deserved the prize for diplomatic efforts with North Korea and other initiatives. The “indelible stain” remark came in earlier complaints about the committee’s decisions.
Trump’s weekend outburst marked the latest instance of him using crude language to describe countries he perceives as slighting him, reviving the same term that sparked international controversy during a 2018 White House meeting about immigration policy.