Can we have the silly season back, please?

Shocked out of holiday mode, and a general cutural innocence, by the worst terror attack in the country's modern history, it is perhaps not surprising that some Norwegians find themselves missing the summer's traditional silly season.

"I miss headlines about dangerous tics, murder snails and vegetable prices," said one influential commentator I ran into on my way into work the other morning.

"I want the headline news on the six o'clock news to be about a farmer's ruined cabbage field... I want the talk of town on warm summerdays in Oslo to be the  price of prawns...I want the men I'm struggling to get a grip on to be ordinary men, not psychotic killers," one blogger wrote on Monday.

Other bloggers have voiced similar sentiments.

It's not only the terror attacks on 22/7, though they have dominated the news ever since that day.

Norway's seen two fatal boating accidents in July too, and it's such a small country that even those affected lots and lots of people.

Not to speak of how such accidents always feel so meaningless and unnecessary.

But I'd never thought I'd see the day when people actually are begging for a return to the much derided silly season, though a part of me can undertand the sentiment.

Having said that, even thought headlines about fruit and vegetable prices was a sign of cultural decay when I grew up, I've since come to understand that these price fluctuations tell us a lot both about hyperlocal and international affarirs.

"As above, so below," the mystics used to say.

I myself am no mystic but this summer has reminded me that even the focus and absence of a country's silly season can tell us a lot about a country and the state it's in: the small things in life - or the absence of them - often mirror the bigger ones.