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Norway's Parliament. Kyrre Lien

Politicians in Norway are not as well paid as their American counterparts and most live a more modest, low-profile existence. The basic pay for U.S. senators and representatives is $174,000 compared to $108,000 in Norway.

Many Norwegians just can't shake the feeling that America elected "a reality star as president," according to Silje Ljdal, a 25-year-old barista. "It's just a reality show, the whole thing," she adds in disbelief.

Opinion seems to be just as scathing outside the city of Oslo.

Annette Dahl, a 26-year-old hunter from Norway's rural Telemark region, says U.S. politics "seems like a circus to me. [Trump] seems like kind of clown, you know? The way he talks and the things he says, it's hard to take him seriously."

Many are just as worried about Trump's substance as they are his style.

Despite almost 4,000 miles between them, Norway has always enjoyed a partnership with the White House and was one of the first nations to join NATO in 1949.

Its inhabitants can be forgiven for paying particular attention to Trump's foreign policy pronouncements; they have skin in the geopolitical game in the shape of a 120-mile border with Russia.

Just last month,

But under Trump, many Norwegians say his comments undermining NATO as "obsolete" have made them feel nervous. Norway is also one of the countries Trump has criticized for not paying the recommended 2 percent share toward the alliance's upkeep.

"It's kind of scary because we share a border with Russia, and we've got Putin turning quite aggressive," says Schiefloe, the carpenter.

"The world is going to change, I hope for the better but I fear it's going to be quite bad," adds Tor Bomann-Larsen, a 65-year-old writer from Drammen, a city 25 miles from Oslo. "We've never seen anything like Trump before, it's something quite new and the world is shaking."

Norwegians also worry about man-made climate change, something Trump has repeatedly labeled a hoax and once even suggested was a conspiracy invented by the Chinese.

His claims go against scientific consensus, but they also threaten Norway's delicate ecosystem, where the northern ice is crucial to the symbolic survival of polar bears and other Arctic creatures.

"If I met Donald Trump I would invite him to Svalbard, in the high north, and I would show him what the climate change is doing to our environment," Norwegian Local Government Minister Jan Tore Sanner told NBC News during an interview in the country's Parliament building.

Like others in his government, Sanner says he is optimistic about working with America's new leader. Asked about Trump's environmental policies, however, and his tone changes slightly.

"The ice is melting," he says. "The climate is changing the way we can the can live in the world."

While the statistics and anecdotes may make liberal hearts flutter, Norway is far from a leftist utopia.

It's current government is led by the Conservative Party and includes lawmakers from the right-wing populist Progress Party, which wants to slash taxes and immigration amid

And of course not everyone here agrees that Norwegian politics is all that great in the first place.

"I don't feel we have the best democracy in the world," says Steinar Vetterstad, a 67-year-old former construction worker from the town of Hokksund. "There are a lot of things that aren't right."

Steinar Vetterstad Kyrre Lien

He has lived off disability benefits ever since he was injured at work.

Symptomatic of the global populism that helped Trump into the White House and Britain vote for Brexit last year, Vetterstad used to support the left-wing Labour Party but in 2013 switched his vote to Progress.

"It is the politicians in Oslo ... don't represent the people anymore ... [they're] just politicians in suits," he says.

That there is such healthy debate in Norway betrays the violence in its recent past. Less than six years ago its democracy came under direct attack.

On July 22, 2011, white supremacist Anders Behring Breivik detonated a car bomb among Oslo's government buildings. Wearing a police officer's uniform, he then drove to the island of Utya, around 20 miles away, and began shooting children staying at a camp run by the left-wing Labour Party. In all, he killed 77 people.

Sanner, the member of Norway's Cabinet, took NBC News to the site of the car bomb.

"It was an attack on Norwegian democracy and ... he killed a lot of young people, young people who were engaged in politics," he says, looking out over where the blast occurred. "They were 16 years old, 18 years old. They just started to be involved in politics and they lost their lives."

The Parliament building in Oslo. Kyrre Lien

"We are still shocked by what has happened, but we will never give up our values," the then-prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said in a speech at the time. "Our response is more democracy, more openness, and more humanity."

Likewise, Sanner sees that dark chapter as a stark warning of what happens when democratic principles are disregarded.

"We didn't think it could happen here but it happened here," he says. "So that shows we have to have an open society, a democratic society, and we cannot take it for granted."

Read more here:
Norway Is the 'World's Best Democracy' We Asked Its People Why - NBCNews.com