Just to be clear, the tree is found in Dalarna in Sweden, though this is indeed East of Trysil in Norway. Since Sciencenorway.no (!) is a Norwegian outlet, they need to at least attempt to make their articles relevant for Norway.
The outlet is the English version of Forskning.no. Forskning means research in Norwegian, but in this instance it really means science. Their focus is to bring news about what Norwegian scientists are up to with popular science articles for the masses. That's why some of their articles seem a tad tabloid at times.
The tradition in Norway is that the most tabloid articles are published during the main summer vacation, when newspapers employ interns and temp journalists. We even have a word for such articles: Agurknytt. It means cucumber news, and implies that the article is desperately trying to make news out of something that isn't.
> Just to be clear, the tree is found in Dalarna in Sweden
They point it out in the introduction: "discovered a tree up on Fulufjället – in Sweden just east of Trysil municipality in Norway" also it says "near the Norwegian-Swedish border" in the headline.
Also, it is only about 4km from the border. This is "near" in this context (context being relatively unpopulated area with not much things except for nature within 4km).
Apparently it's from German around 1780, for the time during the summer when the cucumbers ripen, everyone is on vacation, and business is slow. That's what the Danish wikipedia entry says, at least.
Ah, so the US "dog-days of summer". Not going to lie, I prefer the silly-season nomenclature, it captures the lack of motivation and malaise that seems to set in during the height of summer much better. Thanks for the explanation, very interesting.
English "dog-days" is just a translation of Latin "caniculares dies", which came from the time of visibility before sunrise of the "Dog Star" a.k.a. Sirius.
Other examples would be, according to Wikipedia, "silly season" in english, "serpiente de verano" (summer snake) in spanish, "Sommerloch" in german, and a bunch of others. Very common phenomenon.
The outlet is the English version of Forskning.no. Forskning means research in Norwegian, but in this instance it really means science. Their focus is to bring news about what Norwegian scientists are up to with popular science articles for the masses. That's why some of their articles seem a tad tabloid at times.
The tradition in Norway is that the most tabloid articles are published during the main summer vacation, when newspapers employ interns and temp journalists. We even have a word for such articles: Agurknytt. It means cucumber news, and implies that the article is desperately trying to make news out of something that isn't.