I know it was a joke, but we might actually be hiring someone to do scheme development (in Sweden, not Norway). We started as a mostly delphi shop doing software for smaller private healthcare businesses. Most of our internal tooling evolved started as one-off scripts I wrote in guile.
Our business grew to deliver huge installations on tens of thousands of computers, and our internal tooling grew as well. We have well over 100k lines of scheme. Since it works well, we don't really want to invest in porting it. We tried rewriting our macro system in python, but it was god-awfully slow, and ended up being harder to read. With scheme, we can just rely on syntax-case to de-construct the macros, which is not only fast but also easy to extend.
I am from Sweden and basically everyone here (except some immigrants) speak english very fluently. You would have no issues living in any Nordic country with only English.
I worked at a pretty international company before where there was several individuals whom had lived in Sweden for several years without even bothering to learn the language.
Don't be that guy or gal though, Swedes don't like it when you live here for years without learning anything. Norway is the same, same with Finland and Denmark.
You are welcome, if you ever consider moving I could probably give you some tips of potential employers!
I've been strongly considering moving since spending a semester abroad. Any potential employers or leads you think I should consider? Email's in profile so feel free to pm
I am actually in the making of a swedish job site for developers. But you will have to wait for that one though.
Otherwise, you can search for your language of choice at https://www.arbetsformedlingen.se/. I am sure lots of jobs will turn up, at least in Stockholm. What you want to do is probably to use Google Translate on that webpage or something because their english version sucks ass.
Sometimes English is enough to get through a workplace at times - a lot of tech jobs have English speaking workplaces, for example. Outside of some industries, however, learning the language is nearly required. Socially, however, you'll likely find you'll want to learn the local language.
English does get you pretty far, however, and a lot of folks speak English to varying degrees.
At least in the beginning, and for many companies. International hires is common. There are quite a few offices where English is the official language, as well. You can see that a lot of ads on the site is in English.
Not merely a lot (in Sweden, anyway) - I'd say the vast majority of Swedes are fluent in English; of course more or less so but I don't think I've ever met a Swede who couldn't at the very least hold a basic conversation in English.
And that goes for authorities too. Had a non-Swedish partner for a few years who always communicated in English in all interactions with Sweden's governmental services - no problem. All important government websites are available in English. Knowing Swedish isn't even a requirement for citizenship.
So while knowing Swedish is certainly very beneficial and recommended, you can certainly get by without it, and work for many interesting companies (at least as a developer).
My wife and I spent two weeks in Sweden (well, two of those days were spent in Oslo...), and we only encountered one person who didn't speak English. He was a pizzaman/bartender in Nynäshamn, and luckily all the dudes sitting at the bar translated for us in drunken semi-unison :)
(Honestly, though, we probably would've gotten along fine without the translators, as we'd spent a couple months with Rosetta Stone before traveling... we were/are far from fluent, sure, but good enough to order a pizza, I'd imagine ;) ).
I lived in Denmark for 5 years and yes, it has been like that.
However, all the paperwork you will need to handle will still come in the official language, not in English. All contracts and legal documents will be in that language as well. So not knowing at least the basics will handicap you severely.
I have learned enough of Danish to be able to read the paperwork and do some basic writen communication. That's really the minimum to get you by.
Spoken Danish was a bit too much - the saying that Danish is not a language but a throat disease is not far from the truth!
I'm in Norway, and it is similar here. Not all industries are so kind to non-Norwegian speaking applicants, but government and everyday life usually isn't an issue. Half of the official paperwork has English as well as Norwegian - and English transcripts and official documents are OK to turn into the government without further translation.
That said, as soon as I started getting some actual Norwegian language skills, it improved.